The
Sword of KaliReply to "A Philosophical Critique of Radical
Universalism"

By
Chittaranjan Naik

Introduction

In December 2004, there
appeared in some eGroups an article titled ‘Does Hinduism Teach
That All Religions Are The Same? A
Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism’. Subsequently,
the article also appeared in some print journals including this website.
The author of the article, Dr. Frank Gaetano Morales, is ostensibly
regarded as one of America’s leading authorities on Hindu philosophy
and religion. In his article, Dr. Morales launches a scathing attack on
the conception that all religions are the same, a message that
Hinduism has been proclaiming to the world for the last 150 years, and
claims that this idea – which he calls Radical Universalism –
is not only alien to classical Hinduism but is also the primary factor
that is responsible for the debilitating weakness that we now see
amongst the followers of Hindu religion. According to Dr. Morales the
idea that all religions are the same is an import into Hinduism
from foreign sources and it has weakened the fibre of the religion to
such an extent that it now stands in danger of losing its vital élan
and inner propelling force.

The following words taken
from the paper of Dr. Morales is representative of what he has to say on
the matter:

The
doctrine of what I call "Radical Universalism" makes the
claim that "all religions are the same." This dogmatic
assertion is of very recent origin, and has become one of the most
harmful misconceptions in the Hindu world in the last 150 or so years.

It
is a doctrine that has directly led to a self-defeating philosophical
relativism that has, in turn, weakened the stature and substance of
Hinduism to its very core.

In
modern Hinduism, we hear from a variety of sources this claim that all
religions are equal. Unfortunately, the most damaging source of this
fallacy is none other than the many un-informed spiritual leaders of
the Hindu community itself.

When the Critique of Radical
Universalism was first posted into various discussion forums, the author
had expressed the hope that it would become the definitive statement on
the issue. A visit to Dr. Morales’ website at www.dharmacentral.com/universalism.htm
informs us that this historic critique has created an enormous impact on
Hindu intellectuals and leaders globally and that it is now causing
a thorough reassessment of the idea of Radical Universalism. I am of the
view that a reassessment of the idea, if it is to be done, should be
undertaken only after the arguments furnished by Dr. Morales in support
of his thesis have been critically examined, especially as it seeks to
dethrone from Hinduism a universalism that has so far been the rubric of
its message to humanity. It is in order to provide just such a critical
examination that this response is undertaken.

There is of course much in
Dr. Morales’ paper that finds an immediate resonance in my heart,
especially when he writes words such as these:

Unfortunately,
in our headlong rush to devolve Hinduism of anything that might seem
to even remotely resemble the closed-minded sectarianism sometimes
found in other religions, we often forget the obvious truth that
Hinduism is itself a systematic and self-contained religious tradition
in its own right.

Hinduism’s
unique place in the world does not, by any stretch of the imagination,
have to lead automatically to sectarianism, strife, conflict or
religious chauvinism. Indeed, such a recognition of Hinduism’s
distinctiveness is crucial if Hindus are to possess even a modicum of
healthy self-understanding, self-respect and pride in their own
tradition. Self-respect and the ability to celebrate one’s unique
spiritual tradition are basic psychological needs, and a cherished
civil right of any human being, Hindu and non-Hindu alike.

It is sadly true that the
contemporary Hindu is alienated from his roots and is largely oblivious
to the great philosophical doctrines and tenets of his religion. He has
allowed himself, by his own neglect, to be severed from the living
waters of the greatest truth ever bequeathed to humankind. This neglect
has robbed him of his self-worth as a Hindu and has reduced him to a
state of servility whereby when he speaks about his religion he must do
so by seeking support from outside rather from the bounteous inner
springs of his own inheritance. But, the cause of this chronic malady is
not Radical Universalism as Dr. Morales claims; it is rather the
Hindu’s abandonment of his moral duty, a neglect that has sapped his
vitality to the extent that he is today reduced to the state of being an
abject apologist.

There is certainly a crisis
facing the Hindu today. While the efforts of Dr. Morales to combat the
apathy of the modern Hindu is commendable, and while his message that we
must return to the purer form of Sanatana Dharma is well-founded, it
seems to me that in his overzealous attempt to cleanse Hinduism of the
perceived evil of Radical Universalism he is in danger of overstepping
the mark and denying to Hinduism its great universal vision and
overarching syncretism in which it subsumes the diversities of the
various religions of the world.
Now it happens oftentimes that a great idea loses its living force
because it has been uttered once too often by the vulgar and the rabble.
It is quite natural for us to judge the truth of a person’s words in
accordance with the worth of the person that is uttering them. The
profound message of Hinduism that all religions lead to the same goal
has been repeated with such regularity and unimaginative banality, by
every new-age Hindu guru and self-styled Hindu intellectual, that it has
lost its living force and become a meaningless cliché. While such a
historical turn of events is unfortunate, we would be guilty of
intellectual laxity if we were to discard it merely because of the
dubious nature of the carrier of the message. A truth is a truth whether
it is uttered by a saint or by an idiot.

Radical Universalism and
Hindu Universalism

What exactly is meant by the
term ‘Radical Universalism’? If by Radical Universalism is
meant that all religions are the same in the sense that all religions
are identical in terms of their attributes, doctrines and practices,
then clearly there is no such thing as Radical Universalism in Hinduism,
not even in neo-Hinduism. No Hindu, including a neo-Hindu, unless he or
she be an imbecile, actually means that Hinduism is the same as
Christianity or that he or she is impervious to the perceived
differences between these two religions such as the difference between
the rituals of a Christian going to Church and of the Hindu going to a
temple, or the Christian that believes the world to have been created
ex-nihilo and the Vedantist that believes the world to be an illusion.
That Dr. Morales is using the term Radical Universalism in the sense of
denying all those differences that are seen to exist between religions
is evident from the following statements of his:

To
insist on the complete equality of all religions is to deny their
inherent differences. To deny the inherent differences of varied
religions is to deny them the freedom to have their own beliefs,
rituals, goals, and ways of viewing the world.

The
common mistake that is often made, however, is to mistake the
long-held Hindu tradition of tolerating other religions with the
mistaken notion that Hinduism consequently encourages us to believe
that all religions are exactly the same.

Dr. Morales seems to believe
that the statement ‘all religions are the same’ is identical to the
statement ‘all religions are exactly the same’. But Hinduism
does not say that all religions are exactly the same. Hinduism
says that all religions speak of the same Reality though they may call
this Reality by different names or conceive of It differently. Again,
Hinduism does not say that all paths take you to the same ultimate goal.
Hinduism says that the paths of all religions lead to the same goal even
if they should not succeed in taking you right up to the summit.

There is in reality no such
thing as Radical Universalism. The idea that ‘all religions are
exactly the same’ is devoid of meaning like the sentence ‘he
is the son of a barren woman’ because the multiplicity of
religions indicated by the sentential-subject ‘all religions’
is negated by the predicate ‘are exactly the same’ to present
a mere word-combination devoid of meaning. Dr. Morales violates the
subject-predicate structure of language by interpreting the sentence ‘all
religions are the same’ to mean that all religions are exactly
the same. When it is said that ‘all religions are the same’,
the predicative part of the sentence ‘are the same’ does not
predicate identity as Dr. Morales thinks, but predicates a sameness that
lies within the diversities of attributes found in the various
religions. We shall show what this sameness is in the next section.

We shall henceforth use the
term ‘Hindu Universalism’ to refer to the true universalism
that exists in Hinduism as distinguished from Radical Universalism, or
the absurd idea that all religions are exactly the same. Dr.
Morales conflates the two and presents them as if they constitute one
single idea. It is this conflation that has derailed the entire Critique
of Radical Universalism and reduced it to the level of mere
sophistry instead of being worthy of the title of Philosophical
Critique that it bears. By treating the genuine universalism that
exists in Hinduism as well as the misbegotten idea that all religions
are exactly the same as one amorphous idea under the common
banner of Radical Universalism, Dr. Morales denies not merely the idea
that all religions are exactly the same, but also the veneer of
sublime universalism that runs through the texture of Hinduism.

While it is true that there
is in neo-Hinduism a distressing trend to reduce the great universal
ideas of Hinduism into naïve, and often, inane platitudes, we must at
the same time guard ourselves from overly reacting to it and discarding
the sublime with the profane. If Dr. Morales had merely denied that
traditional Hinduism subscribed to the idea that all religions are
exactly the same, we would have had no cause to write this reply, but
since he also attempts, on account of his indiscriminations, to
dispossess Hinduism of some of its central tenets, and to go so far as
to belittle great Hindu saints like Sri Ramakrishna, we shall be obliged
to set our labours to correct the serious distortions caused by his
paper. We shall do this by first exposing the fallacies in Dr.
Morales’ reasoning, and then by showing that the origins of Hindu
Universalism are found within its own scriptural revelations. Since Dr.
Morales does not distinguish between Radical Universalism and Hindu
Universalism, we shall be constrained to treat the arguments proffered
by him against Radical Universalism as arguments aimed against Hindu
Universalism and demonstrate that these arguments are fallacious.
Furthermore, we shall show that Universalism is not the cause of the
chronic malady that plagues Hinduism today, and that the true cause of
the disease is the Hindu’s abrogation of the moral code that he or she
is to live by.

On the Sameness and the
Distinctiveness of Religions

Since the core issue at hand
relates to the sameness and difference of religions, it becomes
necessary for us to examine the thesis put forth by Dr. Morales in the
light of the fundamental principles of logic (nyaya) by which
things may be said to be same and different. The basic fallacy in the
argument put forth by Dr. Morales is rooted in the premise that if two
things, A and B, are the same then they are identical to each other as
represented by the relation A = B. This kind of logic, which is called
pure logic, abstracts the signs A and B from the natures of the things
that they are applied to. In pure logic, the signs A and B are called
variables and, in practice, they are applied to various objects of the
world without consideration of the type of objects they are brought to
bear upon. The fundamental problem with this method is that, in
actuality, the signs A and B, and the relationships that prevail between
them, are never independent of the natures of objects in the world,
because the natures of the relationships that abide between objects are
given in the very natures of objects themselves. Modern logic does not
recognize that the word ‘logic’ comes from the Greek word
‘logos’ which means ‘word’, and that it is the intrinsic
relationships between word-objects that must determine the operations of
logic. When we apply modern logic to mathematics, the logical rules
apply accurately because they are made to work within the limited
framework of mathematics wherein the objects in question are confined to
mathematical objects – or numbers - but when the variables are not
numbers they must necessarily be applied in manners that are
commensurate with the objects that they seek to bring into relation.
Though analytical philosophy (or modern symbolic logic) attempted to do
this, it fell short of its professed aim because it was derailed by the
sense-reference theory (due to Frege) that created a spurious schism
between mind and matter. For a purer and more pristine form of logic, we
would need to go to the ancient science of logic as given in the organon
of Vedic metaphysics and epistemology.

According to the Vedas, this
world is nama-rupa, or name and form. Name is pada or
word. Form is artha or object. Therefore nama-rupa, the
nature of the world, is pada-artha, or word-objects. The study of
padartha is nyaya shastra or logic. Nyaya is one of
the subsidiary accessories with which one is to approach the study of
the Vedas. Therefore Nyaya is called an upanga or
subsidiary arm of the Vedas; the Vedic religion is a rational religion.
Unlike modern logic, Nyaya does not admit of something called
pure logic that may be abstracted from the things to which they are
applied. All rules of logic are inherently united with the objects to
which they apply because the rules of logic are the structural schemata
of the objects themselves*. In other words, logic is the relational
structure of the world. And because the world is nama-rupa or
word-object, grammar, the relational structure of words or language, is
mirrored in metaphysics, the relational structure of the world. There is
thus no difference between the structural schema of the world and the
structural schema of language because they are not two disparate things,
but two aspects of one structure that are mirrored in each other.
(Wittgenstein seems to have had a glimpse of this truth). Relationships
such as sameness and distinctiveness must be applied in accordance with
the rules of nyaya shastra, especially when the subject matter
happens to be religion and metaphysics. This we shall now proceed to do.

As we have pointed out
already, Dr. Morales starts with a wrong premise by assuming that the
sense of same as attributed to things denies the difference
that persists between them. Differences in attributes do not necessarily
make the things that have those attributes different. An apple is the
same as another apple in respect of being an apple despite the fact that
one may be large and the other small, one red and the other a shade of
green, or the one sweet and the other tasteless. Now there are many
senses in which sameness is asserted of things and it behoves us to
discern in what sense sameness is indicated of them amidst the varieties
and differences that are naturally perceived of them in the world. The
sentence ‘He is that same Devadatta’ asserts the sameness of
the person Devadatta as subsuming the differences seen at different
times and different places of the same person. When one goes back to a
river that one had visited the previous day and says that ‘it is
the same river’, one is asserting the sameness of the river
notwithstanding that Heraclites thought you couldn’t step into the
same river twice. Obviously Heraclites was using the term ‘same’ in
a metaphorical sense to convey that the waters of the river are forever
in a state of flux and that there is nothing of the river’s
constituent that remains the same when you step into it again. But it is
nevertheless the same river despite every single constituent having
changed because otherwise Heraclites would scarce have been able to
recognize any river at all. The sameness of a thing is not given to it
by its diverse attributes, but by its universal. The river Ganga remains
the same river Ganga because of the Ganganess that is persistent
in the ever-changing flux of rushing waters that we see before us. An
existing thing may remain same with itself, and yet it may be different
to our perception at different places and at different times in
accordance with the attributes that it manifests in differing loci of
space and time. Again a thing may be different from another and yet the
two may be the same in respect of their essential natures. What is it
that is different in same things and same in different things? An
examination regarding the sameness and difference of things must be done
in the light of the natures of samanya and vishesha
(universal and particular) and dravya and guna (substance
and attribute). Otherwise one is prone to fall into all sorts of
confusions.

Sameness is given by samanya,
or universal. The fundamental and inviolable truth of a thing is that
it is same with itself. This is its samanya (universal). A
red thing is red not because of some other thing, but because of its
redness. A thing is as it is by virtue of its own nature. Whenever there
is a red thing in this world, it is the same redness by virtue of which
it is red and because of which we are able to say that it is of the same
color. For if the color red in one thing were to be different than the
red color in another thing, the two things would not be of the same
color, as the color of one being different than the color of the other
there would be a difference of color perceived, and by difference
sameness cannot arise. Neither can be it said, as contemporary
philosophers are wont to say, that the red color in the two things are
numerically different, because the difference seen pertains to the
duality that is seen and not to the color that is perceived to be the
same amidst the duality. Thus when sameness is seen of an attribute in
two different things, it is not due to any other reason than that the samanya
of the attribute is seen in both.

When we speak of sameness
with regard to attributes, we do so in respect of the attributes that
are same in different things, but when we speak of the sameness of
existing things, we do so not with regard to the sameness of their
attributes but with regard to the sameness of the things in which
various attributes inhere. The first is the sameness of attribute in
different substantial things and the second is the sameness of the
substantial thing amidst the varieties of attributes in the
instantiations of the substantial thing. While there is not much
confusion regarding the sameness and difference of attributes, there is
considerable scope for misapprehension with regard to the sameness and
difference of substantive things because of the multitude of attributes
that inheres in them. It is necessary therefore that the nature of
substance and attribute be made more lucid.

We do not see merely
attributes in the world, but see attributes as inhering in unities of
existence. The unitary existence of the various attributes of a thing is
substance (dravya). Attributes describe the way an existing thing
(substance) is. Attributes have no existence except in the substance
that they predicate, for substance is their existence. There is no
existential difference between an attribute and the substance that it
inheres in, and therefore there are no two different existentials in a
substantial thing. As a result, no binding relation can be posited
between substance and attributes. (The view that I am presenting here is
strictly not that of Nyaya darshana, but that of Vedanta).
Substance, in its capacity as substance, cannot be perceived in itself
because what is perceived of it is its attribute. Yet in each
perception, the existence, or isness, of the attribute perceived
is substance, for the essence of substance is existence.

What we see as an existing
thing is substance in which diverse attributes inhere. In other words, a
substance comprises innumerable attributes in a single unitary
existence. Now, a thing (substance) does not derive its identity from
the individual attributes that describe it, nor by the combination of
these attributes, but by the samanya that identifies it. That is,
an apple does not derive its identity of being an apple by the redness,
or the roundness, or the sweet taste, that describes it, nor by a
combination of these attributes, but by the samanya that
identifies it, namely appleness. It is in the essence of the samanya,
appleness, to comprise the manifold of attributes that describe an apple
as a unitary thing. Therefore, when we speak of substantial things, the samanya
of the thing comprises a multitude of attributes within it without
detriment to its unity, i.e., the one apple is both red and round
without detriment to the unity of the apple.

Now therefore, the sameness
of two substantial things is given by the samanya that identifies
them both as being same. Since the samanya of a substantial thing
is the unity that comprises the manifold attributes of the thing, two
substantial things may be the same essentially even though the
attributes in the manifold of each may be different. That is, two apples
would be essentially the same (as apples) even though one may have the
attribute of being large and the other small, one red and the other a
shade of green, or the one sweet and the other tasteless, because the samanya,
appleness, that identifies them both as apples informs of their
essential sameness.

It is also necessary for us
to here consider the natures of samanya and vishesha so
that we may not be confounded by the differences of particulars that
arise from the sameness of samanya. Now Samanya is never
manifest by itself as samanya. It is brought forth to cognition
as a particularised instance of its manifestation. The manifestation of
universal (samanya) is therefore always a particular (vishesha).
A particular is never existentially separate from the samanya. If
it were separate, it would be separated from the existence of its
sameness, which is absurd. Therefore, a particular is not different from
the samanya of which it is a particular. Thus there arises the
hierarchy of genera and species as particulars of the universal and from
which they are never different. All flowers are flowers due to the
flowerness in them, and even though a rose and a lotus are different
from each other as particular kinds of flowers, they are both not
different from being the flower that they both are.

(It is necessary at this
stage to introduce a word of caution for the modern reader. In speaking
about padarthas such as substances and attributes, and universals
and particulars, we find that we are quite unaccustomed to grasp these
things lucidly. There are no answers to these questions in contemporary
science and philosophy because contemporary science and philosophy looks
for substance in the world when substance cannot be found by looking for
it in the world. Substance is the bare isness of things, and it
is already grasped in the perception of each thing in the originary
moment of its cognition. It is likewise with samanya or
universals. A universal is not grasped by thought laboring to grasp it.
Thinking particularizes the thing thought about, and a particularized
thing is a particular, not a universal. The natures of substances and
universals are grasped by the stillness of apperception in the act of
perception. That stillness is the disassociation of the witness from the
things it witnesses. Nyaya is a cleansing of the intellect so
that it may sink back into its source, the Heart, from which it sees the
Truth. In the philosophy of Nyaya this is called nihsreyasa).

Now, two things may be said
to be the same in respect of their attributes when there is in them a
sameness of the attribute even though the things themselves may be
essentially different i.e., an apple and a table may be same in respect
of their redness even though the things themselves are different (as
apple and table). Clearly this is not the sense in which Hinduism says
that all religions are the same. There are indeed attributive
differences between various religions, and Hinduism does not negate
these differences.

When two things are said to
be the same essentially (in substance), then it is the sameness of
essence that is asserted even though there may be differences in the
attributes that inhere in them i.e., two tables are the same essentially
even though one may be red and the other white. It is in this sense that
Hinduism says that all religions are the same. Now religion, being an
existing thing, comprises in it various attributes. Hindu religion is
the same as Christian religion in respect of being religion, but is
different from it in respect of the attributes that abide in it as
distinct from the attributes that abide in Christianity. Hinduism and
Christianity are the visheshas (particulars) of the samanya
(universal) called religion and they possess the distinctive
characteristics of their respective kinds. As religions they are the
same because the essence of them both, as religions, is the same.
Suffice it to say that when all religions are said to be the same, they
are thus said not on account of the attributive differences that
distinguish them one from another, but due to that which is same in all
of them. This sameness is the essence of religion that abides in them
all. What this essence of religion is, we shall now see.

Religion is different from
the sciences in one fundamental respect: it places the origin of the
world in a Living Principle. In Hindu terms, the origin of the world is
the Great Being that is conscious and intelligent (chaitanya) as
distinguished from Nature that is unconscious and inert (jada).
The origin, sustenance and dissolution of the universe, has its ground
in the Great Being that is called Brahman by the Vedas. Now religions
may differ in the way they name or describe this Living Principle, or in
the relations they posit as abiding between the Living Principle and
nature (the world), but they do not differ in the one respect whereby
all of them identify the ultimate causes of things to be a Living
Principle in contrast to the sciences that look for ultimate causes in
the natures of physical things. It is this that is same in all
religions. And it is in the way that this Living Principle is revealed
in Hinduism that gives to it its overarching universal vision.

Now it may rightly be asked
of us why we should have gone to this extent to explicate the nature of
sameness and difference when we had already shown that there is no
Hindu, whether classical or neo, that actually abides by the notion of
Radical Universalism if Radical Universalism means an effacement of the
differences perceived between religions. The answer to this question is
as follows: Dr. Morales places the idea that all religions are the
same as standing in opposition to, and being mutually exclusive
from, the idea that each religion is a distinct religion with its
own doctrines, world-view, etc. By creating this artificial opposition,
and by not distinguishing the nature of difference that may be
manifestly present in things that are essentially of the same nature, he
proceeds, by means of fallacious reasoning, to deny the validity of not
only Radical Universalism, which is not present in Hinduism, but also
Hindu Universalism, which is certainly present in Hinduism. Indeed, he
goes so far as to say that the ultimate goal of each religion is a separate
mountain that is completely different from, as well as isolated
from, the mountains of other religions, an idea that is not only foreign
to Hindus but is also one that does violence to the expansive heart of a
true Hindu. We shall demonstrate in this paper, in further support to
the arguments furnished above, that Hinduism does include within it an
overarching universalism that sees all religions as speaking of the same
Reality, and that the differences in their conceptions pertain only to
different aspects of the same Being.

It is clear from the
foregoing deliberations on sameness and difference that the underlying
sameness of religions does not in any way undermine the distinctive
features of each religion. Neither would Hinduism lose its distinctive
character as a great religion by virtue of seeing this underlying
sameness in all religions.

The Disbanding of Logical
Fallacies

Dr. Morales presents his
case with such persuasive force and rhetoric that it is easy to overlook
the many fallacies that lie hidden between the lines of his arguments.
Unless one is alert to the sophisms therein that rise like canards to
lead one astray, one is likely to fall into an abyss of confusion. The
fallacies in the critique, of which there are many, arise both due to
the failure to distinguish between the sameness and the difference of
things as well as due to elementary derailments in logic. We shall show
in this section that the key arguments presented by Dr. Morales against
Radical Universalism reduce to fallacies when applied against Hindu
Universalism.

The Circular Logic Argument
The Circular Logic Argument states that Hindu Universalism leads
to reductio-ad-absurdum by virtue of its claim that all religions are
the same. The argument is as follows: if Hinduism is able to see that
all religions are the same, then it becomes superior to other religions
by virtue of this very vision (which other religions do not claim to
see) and thereby it contradicts the claim that all religions are the
same. In the words of Dr. Morales:

Looking
first at the very statement "All religions are the same"
itself, we quickly discover our first problematic instance of circular
logic.

The
problem that is created is that since only Hinduism is supposedly
teaching the "truth" that "all religions are the
same", and since no other religion seems to be aware of this
"truth" other than modern day Hinduism, then Hinduism is
naturally superior to all other religions in its exclusive possession
of the knowledge that "all religions are the same". In its
attempt to insist that all religions are the same, Radical
Universalism has employed a circular pattern of logic that sets itself
up as being, astoundingly, superior to all other religions. Thus,
attempting to uphold the very claim of Radical Universalism leads to a
situation in which Radical Universalism’s very claim is
contradicted.

The entire argument is
premised on the assumption that the sameness of religions implies a lack
of difference between them. But as we have seen, this premise is wrong.
Even if we should consider that Hinduism would become superior to other
religions by virtue of its vision that all religions are essentially the
same, then such superiority would become a distinctive mark of Hinduism
that is in no way detrimental to the underlying sameness of religions.
It becomes a distinctive mark of Hinduism, in contrast to the
distinctive marks of other religions, and as each of them is a vishesha-religion,
the distinctive marks that inhere in any one of them do not negate the
essential sameness that underlies all of them. Therefore, there is no
danger here of a circular logic arising to negate the universal vision
that is a characteristic feature of Hinduism.

It needs to be clarified
here that a true Hindu, if he is truly imbibed of the universal vision
of his religion, would never consider himself superior to members of
other religions, but would rather embrace them in the expansiveness of
love. Superiority is parasitic upon the notion of the other and otherness
arises due to the loss of love. True religion is the opening of the
heart, and what is opened is the expansive and all-inclusive door of
love.

The Different Mountains
argument
According to Dr. Morales, the realities spoken about by different
religions are so many different mountains. He claims that this is
evident from the fact that these religions take specific pains to
disavow Brahman as being the God of their religions. All we have to say
in reply to this argument is that Hindu Universalism is to be proved by
the presence of universalism in Hinduism, and not by the expressions of
parochialism that may exist in other religions, a fact that Dr. Morales
seems to miss.

In
modern Hinduism, we hear from a variety of sources this claim that all
religions are equal. Unfortunately, the most damaging source of this
fallacy is none other than the many un-informed spiritual leaders of
the Hindu community itself. I have been to innumerable pravachanas,
for example, where a benignly grinning guruji will provide his
audience with the following tediously parroted metaphor, what I call
the Mountain Metaphor.

"Truth
(or God or Brahman) lies at the summit of a very high mountain. There
are many diverse paths to reach the top of the mountain, and thus
attain the one supreme goal. Some paths are shorter, some longer. The
path itself, however, is unimportant. The only truly important thing
is that seekers all reach the top of the mountain."

While
this simplistic metaphor might seem compelling at a cursory glance, it
leaves out a very important elemental supposition: it makes the
unfounded assumption that everyone wants to get to the top of the same
mountain! As we will soon see, not every religion shares the same
goal, the same conception of the Absolute (indeed, even the belief
that there is an Absolute), or the same means to their respective
goals. Rather, there are many different philosophical
"mountains", each with their own very unique claim to be the
supreme goal of all human spiritual striving.

The logic employed by Dr.
Morales is fallacious because it shifts the question in focus, which is universalism
in Hinduism, to something else, namely, what other religions
believe to be their goals. The question here is not of what other
religions believe to be their goals, but of what Hinduism sees the goals
of various religions to be, because what gives to Hinduism its
universalism is to be decided by the intrinsic vision of Hinduism and
not by the opinions of others. Dr. Morales is chasing shadows.

The Contradictions Argument
The Contradictions Argument is based on the ground that two
things that are contradictory to each other cannot be the same. Dr.
Morales posits that if the philosophical content of one religion were to
be true, it would preclude the possibility of the others also being
true. Here is the argument:

I
have chosen these four broad religious traditions (Abrahamic,
Buddhist, Hindu, Jain) to illustrate the point that, not only are
there different religions, but there are also different categorical
types of religion.

These
four categorically different types of religion are wholly
irreconcilable, i.e., if the claims of one is true, then the claims of
the other three are necessarily false. Religion A is a
categorically different type of religion from Religion B if
what must exist if Religion A’s problem, solution and
Absolute are correct cannot simultaneously co-exist with what must
exist if Religion B’s problem, solution and Absolute are
correct, and visa versa. Given the mutually exclusive assertions that
each of these four categorical types of religion uphold about a) the
analysis of the human existential dilemma, b) the means to human
freedom, and c) the ultimate goal to be realized, the overarching
feature of all these four distinct types of religion is that, if the
philosophical content of any one type is true, then the philosophical
content of the other three are clearly not. It is as logically
impossible to hold that these religions are all true, or even that any
two of these religions are simultaneously true, as it is to say that
there is such a thing as a round square, or a married bachelor. Such a
nonsensically contradictory proposition can perhaps be verbally
spoken, but not rationally thought.

There are three kinds of
fallacies in the Contradictions Argument. The first is the
fallacy of taking, as the ground of the argument, an example that is
inapplicable to the case. To say that there exists a round square
or a married bachelor is nothing but delusion. One might as well
claim to have seen the son of a barren woman. Each phrase here
– a round square, a married bachelor – is a unitary phrase and each
must therefore have a unitary meaning, which in the examples cited it
clearly fails to have. Therefore, these phrases are devoid of meaning.
The locus of the qualification ‘round’ is ‘square’, and the
locus of the qualification ‘married’ is ‘bachelor’. Each
qualification is contradictory to the locus in which it is predicated
and therefore it cannot abide in it. But when the loci are different,
such as two tables, then these contrary qualities may abide in them
without detriment to the essential sameness of the loci, as when we say
‘a square table’ and ‘a round table’. Square is contrary to
round, but it is not unreasonable for these two contrary attributes to
be found in two things of the same essential nature, for example, in two
tables. Now therefore, two religions being two different loci, it is not
illogical for contrary attributes to inhere in them despite their
essential sameness as religions. The example of a round square or
a married bachelor on which Dr. Morales bases his argument is
inapplicable to the proposition to be proved.

The second fallacy arises
due to the same error that Dr. Morales is prey to in the Different
Mountains argument – the failure to look at the question of Hindu
Universalism through the eyes of Hinduism. In order to see how Hinduism
reconciles the seeming disparities between religions, it is necessary to
look for it within the doctrines of Hinduism itself. According to
Vedanta, the operative domain of logical rules is the field of logos
(names and forms), whereas the Absolute is beyond the realm of names and
forms. Hinduism sees that there is a mystical core in all religions that
cannot be subjected to the rules of logic operating in the realm of
logos. Contradictions pertain to names and forms, but the Reality of
every religion is the Ground and Origin of names and forms. In Hinduism,
the Absolute is beyond the pairs of opposites; it is the underlying
Substratum from which the pairs of opposites arise and in which they
dissolve. If there are contrary features in the philosophical contents
of various religions as they conceive Reality, Hinduism sees them as the
manifest forms of the same Transcendental Absolute, and the manifest
forms of the Absolute are many and include within them the opposites.
Hindu Universalism says that there is an essential sameness in all
religions, not that there are no contrary features in them. Contrary
things may be said of the same God, for example, God may be said to be
both a great terror and also the all-merciful and compassionate One. Let
us specifically take an example from Dr. Morales’ paper to see where
he is going wrong:

From
the perspectives of reason, logic, theological consistency, and common
sense, only one of these concepts about the Absolute can be true. This
is the case because with any either/or proposition, any one claim
automatically entails the negation of any other contradictory and
opposing claim. Repeating this example, if x is either a square or a
circle, it must be one or the other. It cannot be a round square!
Similarly, the Absolute either has meaningful existence or it does not
exist; the Absolute is either an anthropomorphic entity or it is not;
the Absolute is either singular or else it is plural; etc., etc. For
any one mutually exclusive concept of the Absolute to be true, the
other mutually exclusive concepts are necessarily false. To assert
otherwise is to reduce the Absolute to the level of absurdity.

According to Vedanta, the
Absolute is not governed by either/or propositions. The Absolute is not
an entity that can be encapsulated in propositions because It is the
Ground of propositions. The source of Dr. Morales’ error may be seen
in his assertion that “the Absolute either has meaningful existence
or it does not exist” because the Absolute in Vedanta is not a
thing that may be said to have existence. It is Itself the Existence of
all things. And when a thing is predicated to be existent in this world,
the Existence of the thing is none other than the Absolute Itself. The
Absolute is Sat-Chit-Ananda, and is the existence of both the
square and the circle because it is the Sat that is in them. But the
expression ‘square circle’ does not fall within the realm of
Existence because it is a meaningless term and there is no thing such as
a square circle for existence to be either predicated or denied to it.
When Dr. Morales says that “the Absolute either has meaningful
existence or it does not exist” he does not realize that the term
‘meaningful existence’ does not apply to the Absolute but to
the meanings that lie in the Absolute because meanings are
the forms that exist eternally in the Absolute. According to
Vedanta, words are eternal and are eternally connected to their objects
(meanings). Therefore, meanings are nothing but the eternal logos
in the Absolute that is made manifest as the world. All propositions,
including either/or propositions, are meaning-sentences and are
hence contained within the realm of meanings (or logos) and do not reach
the Absolute which is the Ground of words. Dr. Morales commits a category
error in saying that the Absolute is either this or that.
Now, the Absolute is also the Personal God because it is the Existence
of the Persona in the manifestation of the Personal God. The Absolute is
not merely an anthropomorphic God but also the morphologies of all forms
of life including fishes and tortoises and lions. God manifested not
only as Rama and Krishna and Jesus, but also as matsya (fish) and
kurma (tortoise) and narasimha (man-lion). And lastly, the
non-dual Absolute does not negate the plurality of this world because
the Absolute of the Vedas is That by Knowing which all this
is known, and all this cannot be known by knowing the One
if all this is somehow not retained in the Vedic epiphany of the
One. The paradox dissolves in the non-duality of Advaita through the
vision of the unspeakable Oneness of the world with Brahman. In non-dual
Kashmir Shaivism, the embracing of the paradox is known as sattarka.
Dr. Morales commits a category error and thereby becomes susceptible to
the fallacy of subjecting the Absolute, which is beyond logos, to the
logical rules that are applicable only to the categories of logos.

The third fallacy in the Contradictions
Argument arises due to a lack of perspicuity regarding the meanings
of difference and contradiction. A difference is not
necessarily a contradiction; only those differences that are opposed to
each other are contradictory. Dr. Morales sees contradictions when there
are merely differences and not contradictions. The differences in the
analyses of various religions regarding the human existential dilemma
are not contradictory to one another, but are merely the differences in
the assignations of causes to the human predicament. Every religion
speaks about human existence as a degenerate state of an original
Elysian state, or as a fall, or descent, from a Radiant
Home. The causes assigned to this degeneration by different religions
may be different, but Hinduism sees these causes as various stages in
the manifestation of causality as it irrupts into the corporeality of
this world. For example, Ayurveda finds the causes of diseases in the
imbalance of the three doshas. Yoga goes deeper still and finds them in
the obstructions of the flow of prana. Mimamsa goes deeper still
and finds them in the workings of past karma. These causes are
not contradictory to one another, but one is the manifest symptom of
another deeper cause. Hinduism does not negate the original sin
(or the fall) as being contradictory to avidya, but sees
it as a symptom of primordial avidya. Again, there are
differences and not contradictions between the means prescribed by
different religions for attaining freedom, because all these
prescriptive differences remain grounded in the principle of sacrifice
which in the theistic religions take the form of surrendering to God.

It is somewhat astonishing
to see that Dr. Morales should be bringing up the Contradictions
Argument considering that he finds an underlying unity in the
diverse sects and schools of Hinduism. It is quite evident to anyone
that surveys the staggering variety and diversity of Hindu religion that
Hinduism is itself rife with innumerable differences. If Dr. Morales’
argument were to be valid, then there would no such thing left as
Hinduism, given that its sects and schools have so many contrary claims
regarding not only the nature of Reality but also regarding the means to
the highest good. One school of Hinduism speaks of Nirguna Brahman,
another of Gunapoorna Brahman, another of Shiva, another of Shakti,
another of Vishnu, and another of Kali; the list is almost endless. One
speaks of the dissolution of self in Brahman, another of attaining
Vaikunta, another of attaining Goloka, another of Apavarga. Some speak
of jnyana as the path, some of bhakti as the path, some of nihsreyasa as
the path, and some even of transgression as the path. It is indeed
amusing to see that Dr. Morales finds an underlying unity in these
schools, amidst all the lush differences that exist between them as it
were, by seeing their common adherence to the Vedas. If Dr. Morales can
find the unity of Hindu schools amidst such fecund variety as this, we
are surprised that he is unwilling to see the underlying unity in the
various religions of the world.

The Hermeneutics Argument
Dr. Morales employs hermeneutical analysis to show that the Rg Veda
sentence ‘ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti’ is an ontological
statement and not an epistemological or soteriological statement. While
we agree with Dr. Morales that the Rg Veda sentence in question is an
ontological assertion, we are bound to point out that the argument he
employs only demonstrates this much and nothing more. It does not prove
that Hinduism never had a universal vision. Let us examine the argument:

The
point of this verse is the ontological unity and integrity of the
Absolute, that God is one…despite the fact that this Absolute may
have multiple names. The statement ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti is
an ontological statement with God as subject, not an epistemological
statement with wise-ones as subjects, or a soteriological statement
with the means of liberation as the subject. Indeed, multiple paths of
liberation are not even mentioned in the original Sanskrit of this
verse at all, leaving even less reason for anyone to misinterpret this
as a verse somehow supporting Radical Universalism from a
soteriological perspective. In summation, this verse is not talking
about multiple paths for achieving liberation (since it does not even
mention "paths"). It is not talking about various means of
knowing God. Rather, it is a straightforward ontological statement
commenting upon the unitive nature of the Absolute, that God is one.
Thus, "God is one, despite sages calling it by various
names".

In the above analysis, Dr.
Morales has merely shown that if there are Hindus that take this Rg Veda
sentence as an epistemological or a soteriological statement, then such
Hindus are mistaken. He has certainly not demonstrated that the Rg Veda
statement fails to apply to the Reality spoken of in other religions. In
order to show that the proposition ‘universalism never existed in
Hinduism’ is true, it would be necessary to demonstrate that
traditional Hinduism never considered the Reality spoken of by other
religions as being the One Reality that it speaks about. Now, a Hindu
that considers Reality to be unitive would scarce believe that there are
different realities or different mountains. Therefore, the only options
that remain are: (1) he believes that the reality spoken of by other
religions are the same Reality as the Vedic Brahman, or (2) he believes
that the reality spoken of by other religions are vacuous concepts. Now
the first option would result in universalism. Therefore, in order to
prove that universalism never existed in Hinduism, it would be necessary
to show that Hinduism considers the reality spoken about by other
religions as vacuous concepts. But Dr. Morales does not even attempt to
formulate, let alone verify, such a proposition. Therefore, his blithe
conclusion that Universalism never existed in Hinduism is based on
insufficient logical grounds.

The Etiquette Argument
The Etiquette Argument is another variant of the Different
Mountains argument. Here Dr. Morales makes a case that Hindu
Universalism would result in Hindus becoming disrespectful to other
religions:

As
every religion will vociferously affirm, however, they are not seeking
Brahman. Brahman is not Allah; Allah is not Nirvana; Nirvana is not
Kevala; Kevala is not polytheistic gods/goddesses; polytheistic
gods/goddesses is not Yahweh; Yahweh is not the Ancestors; the
Ancestors are not tree spirits, tree spirits are not Brahman. When a
religious Muslim tells us that he is worshipping Allah, and not
Brahman, we need to take him seriously and respect his choice. When a
Buddhist tells us that they want to achieve Nirvana, and not Brahman,
we need to take his claim seriously and respect his decision; and so
on. To disrespectfully insist that all other religions are really just
worshipping Brahman without knowing it, and to do so in the very name
of respect and tolerance, is the very height of hypocrisy and
intolerance. The uncomplicated fact is that, regardless of how
sincerely we may wish that all religions desired the same Absolute
that we Hindus wish to achieve, other religions simply do not. They,
and we, are attempting to climb categorically different mountains. We
need to accept and live with this concrete theological fact.

Dr. Morales is trying to
decide the question of Hindu Universalism by taking an opinion poll from
members of various religions. He also seems to be concerned that Hindu
Universalism may result in Hindus becoming disrespectful to members of
these religions. But the truth of the matter is not decided by a
democratic vote or by the proprieties of etiquette; it is decided by the
fact of the matter, which is, whether Universalism exists in Hinduism.

It is ironic that Dr.
Morales should bring up the Etiquette Argument here considering that the
alternative option for a Hindu would be to look upon the Gods of the
other religions as so many vacuous concepts (since it is impossible for
him, with his conviction of a unitive Reality, to believe that there are
different mountains). Surely, a Hindu would be more lacking in respect
if he were to call the Gods of the other religions vacuous concepts than
to say that he sees these Gods as aspects of the same God he prays to!

The Imposition Argument
This argument is based on the grand delusion that Hinduism has taken
control of the world’s religions!

For
non-traditional Hindus who assert Radical Universalism, the arbitrary
choice for the one Absolute that all religions must be aiming toward
– whether they know and agree with this or not - is Brahman. In so
doing, however, Radical Universalists are intolerantly imposing
Brahman upon all other non-Hindu religions as their real goal. And
they are making this involuntary imposition in the name of tolerance!

Radical
Universalism, as expressed by modern, non-traditional Hindus, would
seek to deny members of other religions the right to assert their own
religions as unique and distinct traditions. Radical Universalism
would seek to deny non-Radical Universalists the right to believe in
an Absolute that is categorically not Brahman.

By
forcing them to accept Radical Universalism, they are being told that
they have no choice but to adhere to the "one true faith"
that Radical Universalism upholds. That one true faith is
non-traditional, Radical Universalist neo-Hinduism.

In speaking about the rights
of other religions, Dr. Morales would have us believe that Hindus have
some kind of sovereignty over all the world’s religions and are in a
position to force their views on them. Apart from posing to us a fiction
as an argument, I would think also that Dr. Morales has misunderstood
Hinduism. A Hindu does not impose his views on members of other
religions – he says rather that a Christian would move towards God by
being a good Christian and a Muslim would move towards God by being a
good Muslim. We would need to dive deeper into the nature of Hindu
ethics to appreciate this point.

The Scriptural Basis of
Hindu Universalism

Hinduism derives its
universal vision of from its own scriptures. Universalism is not an
aberration of Hindu tradition as Dr. Morales claims, but is the
blossoming of its great heart. In order to show that it is thus, we
shall begin our exposition by first taking up the same Rg Veda verse
that Dr. Morales had analyzed in his paper and demonstrate that it
contains within it the idea of a grand universalism. The verse is:

In order to understand the
full import of this verse, it is necessary to understand the profound
Hindu doctrine regarding the relationship between Brahman and names. In
the Chandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda, we come across the following
narration that invokes this relationship:

Svetaketu went to the
teachers house when he was twelve years of age and having studied the
Vedas till the age of twenty-four, he returned conceited, immodest and
proud of being a learned man.

To him, his father said,
‘O, Svetaketu, O good looking one, now that you are conceited, proud
of being a learned man, and immodest like this, did you ask about that
instruction through which the unheard of becomes heard, the unthought
of becomes thought, and the unknown becomes known?’

Svetaketu asked: ‘O,
venerable sir, what is that instruction?’

‘O good looking one,
just as by knowing a lump of earth, all that is made of earth is
known, the modification being only a name, arising from speech, while
the truth is that all is clay;

‘O good looking one,
just as by knowing a nugget of gold, all that is made of gold is
known, the modification being only a name, arising from speech, while
the truth is that all is gold;

‘O good looking one,
just as by knowing a pair of nail-scissors, all that is made of iron
is known, the modification being only a name, arising from speech,
while the truth is that all is iron – even so, O good looking one,
is that instruction.’

‘Those venerable
teachers did not certainly know this. For, if they had known this, why
should they not have told me? May you, venerable sir, tell me about
it.’

‘O good looking one, so
be it’, said he.

Then follows the instruction
regarding Brahman, the significance of the entire instruction being that
this universe of diverse names and forms is not different from Brahman,
and that the seeming difference it has from the Great Being is ‘vacarambhanam’,
having its origin in speech only. The seeming separation is ‘vikarah’,
transformation, that is ‘namadheyam’, given to it by name
only. The Brahadaranyaka Upanishad says:

Now, all this (universe)
was then undifferentiated. It became differentiated by name and form:
it was known by such and such a name, and such and such a form. Thus
to this day this (universe) is differentiated by name and form.
(I.iv.7)

According to Advaita
Vedanta, the effect is pre-existent in the cause, and all names and
forms abide eternally in Brahman. There is in reality no creation
because that which is already pre-existent cannot be born again.
It is the magic of words that plays upon the screen of non-duality and
holds us enrapt to the siren songs of plurality. In purely logical
terms, the world is aja, unborn, and the doctrine of non-creation is
called ajatavada. But there is in Reality a mystical nature
through which the unborn unfolds, and this mystery is evocated
beautifully in the Advaita doctrine of vivartavada. According to
the Grammarians, vivarta is the unfolding of Vak (speech)
through four stages of evolution. These stages are called para,
pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari.** The mystery of vivarta
is that, in each of these different stages, the word and the object
denoted by the word remains the same and the difference brought about by
vivarta is the mystery of its own difference, as it were,
and the world springs into being in the womb of this great mystery. A
word is essentially one with Brahman as para vak. It springs from
its heart into the formless embryo – the pashyanti – which is
the causal seed that is ready to sprout into manifest form. In its
middling state - madhyama – it presents the forms in ideality
before it springs into the luxuriance of the created world as vaikhari.
A form is not a non-form because it is unmanifest, for in that
unmanifest state it is the very same form that becomes manifest. In all
stages of speech, creation remains always non-different from Brahman.
Therefore, every name ultimately points to Brahman, and in the ultimate
vision of the Hindu, even the clod of earth and the expanse of the sky
is Brahman; how then can a Hindu say that the Reality of other religions
is not Brahman? This then is the import of the Rg Veda verse ‘ekam
sad vipra bahudha vadanti’, that Reality is One though sages and
different religions may call It by various names. The difference is
merely the difference of names.

The insight of every
religion is an epiphany. An epiphany is not a mere perception, but is
the penetration of vision to the Numinous Ground that underlies
the corporeality of the world. The Numinous Ground of every religion is
a Living Principle. According to Vedanta, the essence of the Living
is chaitanya, and chaitanya is undivided (akhanda)
and immutable (akshara). How is it possible for a Hindu to say
that the Living God of other religions is another mountain when
the essence of the Living is Undivided Consciousness? For him the
Reality that sages and different religions call by different names is
the One Undivided Reality that he calls Brahman. This is the
grand Universalism that we find in Hinduism and it finds one of its most
beautiful expressions in the Svetasvatara Upanishad of the Krishna Yajur
Veda:

"The whole universe
is filled by the Purusha, to whom there is nothing superior, from whom
there is nothing different, than whom there is nothing either smaller
or greater; who stands alone, motionless as a tree, established in His
own glory." (III.9)

"All faces are His
faces; all heads, His heads; all necks His necks. He dwells in the
hearts of all beings. He is the all-pervading Bhagavan. Therefore he
is the omnipresent and benign Lord." (III.11)

"The Purusha with a
thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet, compasses the earth
on all sides and extends beyond it by ten fingers' breadth."
(III.14)

"His hands and feet
are everywhere; His eyes, heads, and faces are everywhere; His ears
are everywhere; He exists compassing all." (III.16)

"That is Agni; It is
Aditya; It is Vayu; It is Chandrama. That Self is the luminous stars;
It is Hiranyagarbha; It is water; It is Virat." (IV.2)

"Thou art woman, Thou
art man; Thou art youth and maiden too. Thou as an old man totterest
along on a staff; it is Thou alone who, when born, assumest diverse
forms." (IV.3)

"Thou art the
dark-blue bee; Thou art the green parrot with red eyes; Thou art the
thunder-cloud, the seasons, and the seas. Thou art beginningless and
all-pervading. From thee all the worlds are born." (IV.4)

These Vedic verses are
sufficient to show that there flows a great stream of universalism in
Hinduism. Brahman is the Godhead in all manifestations of God. There is
no question here of the Reality of other religions being different
mountains. The question is only regarding the manner of conception of
the One Living Reality. And though various religions may conceive
Reality differently, Hinduism sees that all these conceptions are of the
same Reality, the differences between them being merely due to the
differentiating power of names. When Brahman, the Godhead in all
manifestations of Gods, is beyond the pairs of opposites, it would be
juvenile to bring up specious arguments purporting to show that there
are contradictions between the Reality of various religious. In one of
the most sublime dialogues of the Upanishads, Yajnavalkya answers Gargi
when she questions him on the nature of Brahman:

"O Gargi, the knowers
of Brahman say this Immutable is That. It is neither gross nor minute,
neither short nor long, neither red nor oiliness, neither shadow nor
darkness, neither air nor ether, unattached, neither savour nor odour,
without eyes or ears, without the vocal organ or mind, without the
vital force or mouth, not a measure, and without interior or exterior.
It does not eat anything, nor is It eaten by anybody."
(Br.Up.III.viii.8)

Brahman is untouched by the
pairs of opposites and yet It is the substratum of the entire universe.
Brahman is the material cause of the universe, and therefore all this is
Brahman alone. From the Aitareya Upanishad of the Rg Veda we have the
following words:

“He is Brahman, He is
Indra, He is Prajapati; He is all these gods; He is the five great
elements – earth, air, akasha, water, fire; He is all these small
creatures and the others that are mixed (with them); He is the origin
(of the moving and the unmoving) – those born of an egg, of a womb,
of sweat, and of a sprout; He is horses, cows, human beings, elephants
– whatever breathes here, whether moving on legs or flying in the
air or unmoving. All this is guided by Prajnanam, is supported by
Prajnanam. The basis (of the universe) is Prajnanam. Prajnanam
(Consciousness) is Brahman.” (III.i.3)

Dr. Morales makes a case
that the great Hindu Acharyas never subscribed to the idea of
universalism. As proof of this proposition, he points to the intense
polemics that these Acharyas engaged in. Dr. Morales does not seem to
realize that what is at stake in vada, or Hindu polemics, is
Vedartha, the ultimate Truth of the Vedas, and not the negation of other
conceptions of Reality as being different mountains. Shankaracharya,
arguably the greatest and most uncompromising of the Acharyas, mentions
that the other aspects of Brahman are also visions of Reality even
though they constitute the Lower (apara) Nature of Brahman and
fall short of the ultimate Truth of Vedanta. The same Shankaracharya who
demolished in debate every other school of Hinduism prevalent during his
time was also the Dharma Rakshaka that was responsible for
re-establishing the worship of Vaidika Gods after the decline of
Buddhism in India. Contradictions certainly exist between various
conceptions of Reality, but the vision that goes beyond conceptions to
the Ground of conceptions sees all these conceptions as attempts to
grasp the same Ground that is the One Reality. In Vedic culture,
polemics is not opposed to Universalism but is the way to the ultimate
vision that subsumes all the diverse conceptions of Reality in it.
According to Suresvaracharya, the disciple of Shankaracharya, the
various doctrines about Reality exist eternally in the Nature of God:

All these alternate views
(different darshanas) existed, before creation, in the Atman, as the
sprout in the seed. They were displayed by the power of Maya
comprising ichha (will), jnana (knowledge) and kriya (action) of
Ishvara. (Manasollosa,II.43)

Universalism is ubiquitous
in the pages of Hinduism. While its roots lie in the Vedas, it gushes
out into the lives of millions of Hindus through the subsidiary
scriptures of Hinduism known as Smrtis. If we have to look for
universalism in Hinduism, we would have to also bring in these
subsidiary scriptures, which we shall now do.

There is a great wealth of
literature in Hinduism called the Puranas. They belong to a class of
scriptures known as the upangas3, or subsidiary arms of the Vedas. One
finds in these scriptures a unique conception that is not found in any
other religion of the world. It is the concept of avatara – the
doctrine that God incarnates on this earth from time to time. I am
surprised that this doctrine does not find a place of mention in Dr.
Morales’ paper, for it is this conception that gives to Hinduism the
universal vision in which it sees the different religions of the world
as having been revealed by the same God. One finds the seeds of this
idea in the Bhagavad Gita, which is regarded as one of the prasthana-traya
(three-fold canons) of Hinduism:

Though I am unborn, of
imperishable nature, and though I am the Lord of all beings, yet
ruling over My own nature, I am born by My own Maya. (IV.6)

Whenever there is a decay
of dharma, O Bharata, and an ascendancy of adharma, then I manifest
Myself. (IV.7)

For the protection of the
good, for the destruction of evil, for the firm establishment of
dharma, I am born in every age. (IV.8)

Would Dr. Morales have us
believe, in the face of this declaration by Lord Krishna Himself, that
the prophets of other religions were all fakes who beckoned their
followers to different, ungodly, mountains? In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord
Krishna says that even those who pray to lesser gods (in the taxonomy of
gods) only pray to Him:

Even those who, being
devoted to other gods, worship them with faith, they worship only Me
without knowing it, O son of Kunthi. (IX.23)

The Puranas narrate the
manifestations of God both in the heavenly realm as well as the earthly
realm. One of the significant things about the Puranas is that they are
not mere legends bound in papyrus scrolls; they bring to life the
presence of Divinity all around us by enshrining the places on this very
earth where God had manifested in His Leela. The Hindus call these
places tirthas. Wherever one goes in India, one finds places that
have been hallowed by the presence of Divinity. The land of Bharata is
blessed with thousands and thousands of such tirthas – that is
why it is called the pavithra bhoomi. The Hindu does not approach
these tirthas as he would approach a mere place, but he
approaches them as places infused with the Divine Shakti of Godhead****.
To him, in the final revelation, the clod of earth is not earth but God,
and the slab of stone is not stone but God. For in the Vedantic truth
they are indeed God – the earth and the slab of stone are the shimmer
of Light, the dance of Effulgence in the Divine Consciousness of God.
The goal of a Hindu is to cleanse his soul so that he may behold God in
all things; how then can we say to him that the goals of other religions
are so many different mountains? Such a thing can never be! It is what
the Hindu sees that constitutes his universalism. Let us not deny to him
his very heart.

To see a constricted meaning
in the Rg Veda sentence by subjecting it to the likes of Exegetical
Categorical Analysis is mere verbiage that has no bearing on the
question of Hindu Universalism. Dr. Morales tries to make a case that
since this Rg Veda verse is an ontological statement, it fails to
support the soteriological claim that all paths lead to the same goal.
But here we have to ask Dr. Morales: Is there soteriology that is
independent of the ontological nature of Reality? The means of salvation
is necessarily given in the vision of Reality that a religion subscribes
to. In Advaita Vedanta, for example, release ‘obtains’ from
realizing the identity of the atman with Brahman. (I enclose the word
‘obtains’ within quotes because release in Advaita is the revelation
of truth as it eternally is and is not an event or result of action).
This is commensurate with the ontological vision of Advaita in which
Brahman is the sole Reality that admits of no difference within It. In
Visistadvaita, release is obtained by the consciousness of the soul
expanding by jnyana-bhakti to attain identity with the Lord in an
eternal sesha-Seshi relationship. This is commensurate with the
Visistadvaita vision of ontology in which the world (and the soul) is
the inseparable body of Brahman. The soteriological path of each school
is grounded in its own unique ontological vision of the Reality. And yet
the Reality of which they all speak is One, though sages and different
religions may call It by various names or conceive of It variously. The
difference is ‘vacarambhanam’, having its origin in speech
only.

Hinduism recognizes that all
paths lead to the same goal though it does not subscribe to the view
that all of them take you right up to the summit. The key element of
this universal idea is not the identity of the goals, but the directedness
of the paths to the goal. Now, where shall we look for the source of
this Hindu universal idea? Again, I am surprised that Dr. Morales is
blind to one of the central doctrinal tenets of Hinduism. It is the
doctrine of transmigration of soul.

Just as a man casts off
worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so does the embodied
(Self) cast off worn-out bodies and enters others which are new. (Bh.
Gita. II.22)

The Hindu belief that all
paths lead to the same goal must be seen in the context of this Hindu
doctrine. The goal of moksha is extremely difficult to attain. The
Bhagavad Gita says:

Among thousands of men,
one perchance strives for perfection; even among those who strive and
are perfect, only one perchance knows Me in truth. (VII.3)

The goal is not attained in
a single birth. One strives for it in birth after birth. Hinduism
recognizes that it would be myopic to say that one path is right for a
soul and another path wrong. The horizons of our vision stretch from
birth to death, and we know not whence a person has come, nor the
destination to which he goes. There is a path in Hinduism for every
aspirant of the truth, some that would take him from where he is
situated today and lead him slowly to the next peak where he can tarry a
while before he proceeds with his journey on perhaps another path that
leads him higher still. One traveller may be stationed at the foot of
the mountain, and another may be stationed away from the foothill and
across the river. The one needs mountain shoes, and the other a raft.
There is no use giving a raft to the first and shoes to the second. The
path of religion is not a physical tract; it is the inner path of the
soul. Can one say here where a particular soul is situated or what
prescription it needs where it is now situated? How then can we say on
which path a person should tread? For one that is fit to be on a path,
the Supreme One decides what path he or she is to take. In the Bhagavad
Gita, the paths are called Yogas, and this is what the sixth discourse
says:

Arjuna said:
He who strives not, but who is possessed of faith, whose mind wanders
away from Yoga – having failed to attain perfection in Yoga, what
end, O Krishna, does he meet?

Having failed in both,
does he not perish like a riven cloud, supportless, O mighty-armed,
and perplexed in the path to Brahman?

This doubt of mine, O
Krishna, do Thou dispel completely; for none other than Thee can
possibly destroy this doubt.

The blessed Lord said:
O Partha, neither in this world nor in the next is there destruction
for him; none, verily, who does good, My son, ever comes to grief.

Having attained to the
worlds of the righteous and having dwelt there for eternal years, he
who failed in Yoga is reborn in a house of the pure and wealthy.

Else, he is born in a
family of wise Yogins only. This, verily, a birth like this, is very
hard to obtain in this world.

There he gains touch with
the knowledge that was acquired in the former body and strives more
than before for perfection, O son of Kurus.

By that very former
practice is he borne on, though unwilling. Even he who merely wishes
to know of Yoga rises superior to the Word-Brahman.

According to Hinduism, birth
is not an accident. One is not thrown into the world, but is stationed
here by the workings of the Great Law. The path given is what is earned.
There is here no inferior path and superior path; there is the path that
is appropriate to where one is stationed. But they all lead to the same
goal – ultimately. That is Hindu Universalism.
It has been shown adequately in this section that Hindu Universalism
springs from the soil of its own scriptures. It was not implanted into
Hinduism by the designs of the British rulers nor was it brought into it
by the interpolations of the Brahmo Samaj. It has always existed in the
Great Heart of Hinduism. Lastly, before we proceed to the next section,
we would like to respond to a rather misleading statement of Dr.
Morales:

Let
us look now at what Hinduism, specifically, holds to be the Absolute.
The ultimate goal and Absolute of Hinduism is termed Brahman in
Sanskrit. The word comes from the Sanskrit verb root brh, meaning
"to grow". Etymologically, the term means "that which
grows" (brhati) and "which causes to grow" (brhmayati).
Brahman, as understood by the scriptures of Hinduism, as well as by
the acharyas of the Vedanta school, is a very specific conception of
the Absolute. This unique conception has not been replicated by any
other religion on earth, and is exclusive to Hinduism. Thus to even
call this conception of Brahman "God" is, in a sense,
somewhat imprecise.

Brahman, as revealed by the
Vedas, is not a specific conception. Brahman is the Great Saman of
concepts. Brahman cannot be contained or limited by any conception
whatsoever for It is the Being beyond conceptions. Yet, Brahman is that
in which no concept is negated; every single thing remains in Brahman in
the exactitude of its true nature, and the knowledge of Brahman is the
enlargement of the aperture of our vision to the sweeping compass of Its
presence that can never be grasped in its entirety. Brahman goes farther
than conception can go and stretches farther still beyond the farthest
horizons. The ‘neti, neti’ of the Upanishads does not
subtract the world from Brahman, but weeds out the tangled knots of the
mind in trying to grasp the Great Ungraspable that is at once not all
this and is yet all this. Brahman is the Great Unmoved Mover; He is the
Immutable that moves. He is the Spanda, the vibration that has no
motion. He is Akshara and He is not other than all this that is born and
passes away. Who indeed has ever known Him but Him? The Knowledge of
Brahman is the purnanubhava beyond conception that includes the
essence of all conceptions; Brahman is not a specific conception. Dr.
Morales is confused between conception and Vedic epiphany.

Hinduism and the 72 Houris
of Islam

In the Divine Comedy, that
great medieval classic which has been called a metaphor of Western
culture, Dante Alighieri paints a picture of Prophet Mohammed as a sower
of discord and shows him suffering for his sins in the infernal regions
of hell, his body mangled and split into two from chin to crotch, and
his guts, heart, lung, liver and gall bladder hanging out between his
legs. While the Divine Comedy is no doubt a work of considerable merit,
it still cannot be absolved of stooping to the kind of religious bigotry
that has often turned Western history into a horrible saga of blood.
Admittedly, the flavor of Islamic religion may not be palatable to the
Christian sensibility, but that is hardly a justification for the kind
of violent and morbid depiction that Dante paints of Prophet Mohammed in
the Divine Comedy. There are some Christians not wanting even today who
believe that Islam is a fraudulent religion, and though Dr. Morales is a
Hindu and not a Christian, his words carry the same kind of innuendo
when he quotes the Quran to portray that the salvific state of Islam is
a kind of earthly paradise in which 72 virgins lie in wait for the pious
Muslim.

The
Christian’s sole aim in salvation is to be raised physically from
the dead on the eschatological day of judgment, and to find herself
with Jesus in heaven, who is to be found seated at the right hand of
the anthropomorphic male Father/God of the Old and New Testament.
Muslims aspire toward a delightfully earthy paradise in which 72
houris, or virgin youth, will be granted to them to enjoy (Qur’an,
76:19). Jains are seeking kevala, or "aloneness", in which
they will enjoy an eternal existence of omniscience and omnipotence
without the unwanted intrusion of a God, a Brahman or an Allah.
Buddhists seek to have all the transitory elements that produce the
illusion of a self melt away, and to have themselves in turn melt away
into the nihilism of nirvana. To the Buddhist, Brahman also is an
illusion. Each of these different types of religion has its own
categorically unique concept of salvation and of the Absolute toward
which they aspire. Each concept is irreconcilable with the others. To
state the situation unequivocally, if a Christian, Muslim, Jain or
Buddhist, upon achieving their distinct notion of salvation, were to
find themselves instead united with Brahman, they would most likely be
quite upset and confused indeed. And they would have a right to be!
Conversely, the average yogi probably would be quite bewildered upon
finding 72 virgins waiting for him upon achieving moksha, rather than
realizing the eternal bliss of Brahman. One person’s vision of
salvation is another person’s idea of hell.

The first thing that strikes
one on reading these words is the self-contradiction that is inherent in
it:

To
state the situation unequivocally, if a Christian, Muslim, Jain or
Buddhist, upon achieving their distinct notion of salvation, were to
find themselves instead united with Brahman, they would most likely be
quite upset and confused indeed.

Brahman is Sat-Chit-Ananda
(Existence-Consciousness-Bliss). To be united with Brahman is to become
Brahman. If a Christian, Muslim, Jain or Buddhist were to be united with
Brahman, he would therefore find that he is supremely happy (Ananda).
If he is upset instead, it only means that he has failed to unite with
Brahman! Union with Brahman comes about only when the mind is free from
the proclivities to get upset and is unperturbedly blissful. Again, if a
Christian, Muslim, Jain or Buddhist were to be united with Brahman, he
would find himself free from all confusion because Brahman is the
All-Knowing One. If he finds himself confused instead, it only means
that he has failed to unite with Brahman. Union with Brahman comes about
only when all confusion is gone and the light of jnana shines in the
heart. To say that a Christian, Muslim, Jain or Buddhist would get upset
and confused on finding himself united with Brahman is a
self-contradiction in terms. The contradiction results from equivocating
on the meaning of the term ‘union with Brahman’. So much for
Dr. Morales’ understanding of Vedanta! What Dr. Morales claims to be
stating unequivocally turns out to be a shining example in
equivocation!

The Upanishads state that
Brahman presents Itself in accordance with the conception of Reality
that one is fixated on. One that conceives Brahman as nothing becomes
nothing (Tai.Up.VI.1). One that conceives Brahman as kevala becomes
kevala. The goal of Vedanta however is to attain complete freedom from
the limiting boundaries of conceptions by awakening to the Brahman that
is the source, sustenance and dissolution of conceptions. Gaudapada says
in his Karika on the Mandukya Upanishad that all these conceptions are
of the nature of chittaspanditam, the vibration of Consciousness.
Regarding the ways in which different schools conceive Reality, he says:

Anyone, to whom a teacher
may show a particular object as the Reality, sees that alone. And that
thing, too, protects him by becoming identified with him. That
absorption leads to his self-identity with the object of devotion.
(Karika.II.29)

Through these things that
are really non-different from the Self, this Reality is presented as
though different. He who truly knows this grasps the meaning of the
Vedas without any hesitation. (Karika.II.30)

Dr. Morales finds it quite
bewildering that there should be in Reality a salvific state in which 72
virgins are found waiting upon the soul in paradise. But a true Hindu
does not find such a salvific state dissonant with his universalism. Dr.
Morales seems to carry with him the influence of the Judeo-Christian
tradition with its abhorrence for the erotic, an affliction that stems
more from the excessive institutionalization of the religion by the
Church rather than from true Christianity itself. To a Hindu, the erotic
is not something alien; it is as natural to life as breathing is. Eros
touches every man and woman, and that is the reason men and women
gravitate towards each other, marry and procreate. The essential form of
the erotic is Beauty, and its primary flavor is Sweetness. This erotic
essence lies masked beneath the separation of the inner man and woman
that is within us all. The union that the genders seek in their mortal
bodies is the eternal unity of the masculine and the feminine that they
see dimly refracted through the prism of duality. The unending lure of
man for woman and of woman for man is a reflection of this underlying
union of male and female in the mirror of flesh, and the blinding
passions that it inflames can cause a man or woman to descend to the
depths of hell, but when the same desire is sublimated into love for the
Divine, it can become a path to salvation. The radiant sweetness of love
that shines when there is single-minded devotion to the Lover is called madhura-bhava.
It is the central theme of Rasa-leela, the play of Radha and Krishna
enacted in Vrindavana with all its intense longings and passions
converging to the rapturous union of Lover with Beloved. In
Christianity, this theme appears in the form of Bridal Mysticism and it
is articulated beautifully in the Dark Night of St. John. It is also the
mystic theme of the Sufi in the blossoming of the Islamic heart.

In the highest flight of
Vedanta, the erotic is directed completely towards the inner beatitude
of Self. Everything in the world is shunned in the freedom that the
heart displays towards all external things. This characteristic of the sadhaka
is called vairagya. In Advaita, for example, the sadhaka
displays vairagya for everything here and hereafter up to and
including the world of Brahma. He is like the burnt out wick of a lamp;
he is nothing in his quest to attain everything. Without such supreme vairagya,
one is not fit for the path of Advaita. How many sadhakas are there in
this world - even amongst the yogis - that have this kind of vairagya?
But Hinduism has a place for all sadhakas, even for the one that is
lacking in this kind of supreme vairagya. Such a one, in whom
there is still the trace of desire, has adhikara for other forms
of sadhana. He is said to follow the path of the Lower Brahman.
The distinction of the Higher and Lower aspects of Brahman is mentioned
in the Prasna Upanishad:

Then Satyakama the son of
Sibi asked Pippalada: Sir, if among men someone should here meditate
on the syllable Om until death, which world verily would he win
thereby? (V.1)

He replied: O Satyakama,
the syllable Om is the Supreme Brahman and also the other Brahman.
Therefore he who knows It attains, with its support, the one or the
other. (V.2)

The two aspects of Brahman
are existentially One. The Higher is the formless aspect and the Lower
is the Lord ornamented with the universe. The Higher is the goal that
Advaita Vedanta seeks, but paradoxically this goal is not a goal. The
moksha of Advaita is not a state to be achieved; it is the revelation of
the soul’s identity with Brahman, and this revelation is not
contingent on place, time, or action. It is the awakening to the Truth
that always is. Therefore the path of Advaita is strictly not a path. It
has been called asparsa yoga, and in the words of Gaudapada, it
is as untraceable as the footprints of a bird that has flown across the
sky. Advaita however admits that those who are devoted to the Lower
Brahman attain to salvation in stages. Shankaracharya says that the
Lower Brahman is Hiranyagarbha, the Purusha that is identified with all
the beings of the world. The fourth section of the Brahma Sutras
describes the path that a soul devoted to the Lower Brahman takes on its
way to release (moksha). The soul is said to start along the path of
flame and is then led by the deities to the worlds of the gods and
finally to the world of Hiranyagarbha. The soul abides here until the
dissolution of the universe whereupon it obtains final release.
Commenting on the sutra, Shankara says:

The idea conveyed is that
when the time for the final dissolution of the world of the Lower
Brahman is imminent, the aspirants who have acquired full realization
there attain thereafter, alongwith Hiranyagarbha, the ruler of the
world, the supreme state of Vishnu which is absolutely pure. This kind
of liberation by stages has to be admitted on the strength of the
Upanishadic texts speaking of non-return etc. But we have established
earlier that it is incomprehensible that the Supreme (Higher) Brahman
should be reached by any process of moving forward. (BSB.IV.iii.5.10)

In the world of
Hiranyagarbha, the soul enjoys the pleasures of heaven that accrues to
it from the merits it has accumulated in its journeys. The arrow of
karma that has left the bow must exhaust itself before the hour of
release comes. There is nothing strange if even a Hindu yogi should here
find himself greeted by 72 exquisitely beautiful apsaras! Shankaracharya
comments on the last sutra of the Brahma Sutra as follows:

“In the world of
Brahman, existing in the third order of heaven (i.e., Brahma-loka)
counted from this earth, there exists two seas called Ara and Nya,
where is to be found a lake full of delightful food, where exists a
banian tree exuding ambrosia, where is to be seen a city of Brahman
called Aparajita (the unconquered), and where stands a golden palace
made by the Lord Himself (Ch.VIII.v.3). That world is also spoken of
variously in the mantra and eulogistic (arthavada) portions. After
reaching there, the souls do not return as others do from the world of
the Moon when deprived of their enjoyment.”

The highest path of Advaita
is for those that have the highest vairagya, but for others it is not
unusual that jnana may arise even when subtle desires in the soul have
not been fully eradicated. Such a soul attains the world of the Lower
Brahman, and there it enjoys the fruits of its merits until the time of
the dissolution of the world arrives. The Brahma Sutra says that the
desires of a freed soul in Brahma-loka is fructified by its will alone
without the need of any other agency, for in this realm the soul’s
will is never infructuous. There is nothing incoherent if in this
paradise the soul of an Islamic hero should be welcomed by 72 beautiful
virgin youths. There is no reason why the elevated soul of a pious
Muslim devotee should not have its share of pleasure in heaven. Hinduism
may be uncompromising in its pursuit of truth, but its heart is large
enough to accommodate the salvific states of other religions*****. Let
us not confine Reality to the limited horizons of our myopic vision.

Ramakrishna and the
Irruption of Hindu Universalism

In his attempt to negate
Radical Universalism, Dr. Morales also degrades and belittles the Hindu
saint, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who was perhaps the greatest living
proof of Hindu Universalism.

The
next two neo-Hindu Radical Universalists that we witness in the
history of 19th century Hinduism are Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and
Vivekananda (1863-1902).

Throughout
his remarkable life, Ramakrishna remained illiterate, and wholly
unfamiliar with both classical Hindu literature and philosophy, and
the authentic teachings of the great acharyas who served as the
guardians of those sacred teachings. Despite the severely obvious
challenges that he experienced in understanding Hindu theology,
playing upon the en vogue sentiment of religious universalism of his
day, Ramakrishna ended up being one of the most widely popular of
neo-Hindu Radical Universalists.

These are careless words. Do
we recognize whom we are here sitting in judgment over? Which pole of
the paradox that was Sri Ramakrishna are we speaking of? Is it of the
Ramakrishna that was nothing but a flute through which Reality poured
forth its Divine Music? Or is it of the Living Reality that filled the
mortal frame through and through till there was nothing here but the
Life of the Universe pulsating in the frame?

Do we recognise that there
was no Ramakrishna, the man? That there was only Sri Ramakrishna, the
artless child, and Sri Ramakrishna, the Unfathomable Reality?

This is Living Waters, not
the arid desert of academy! The future of Hinduism is not determined by
academic papers, but by the living founts of its living saints!

Religion is not archaeology;
it is Life. The saint of Dakshineswar was not just a man; he was an
irruption of epiphany into the flowing waters of Hinduism!

Did someone say that Sri
Ramakrishna was not familiar with the authentic teachings of the great
Acharyas? The authentic Self needs no teachings! It is the Reality that
is spoken of in the Vedas! Have we not heard of the doctrine of
Pratyabhijna? Sri Ramakrishna recognized within his Self what others
strive to learn from without!

This world has come out of
the Self; where shall ye find its truth if not in the recognition of
Self? The Self is all this. Saints like Ramakrishna are not influenced
from outside; they recognise each thing outside as the play of Eternity
inside!

The play of Eternity is
Kaala, Time! She is Kali who moves it; She is Eternity moving. She it
was that filled Sri Ramakrishna!

Does anyone still say that
Sri Ramakrishna was unfamiliar with the authentic teachings of Hindu
religion? With what authority do we impugn the very life of Hindu
religion? Are we blind to the fact that this child of God, this
illiterate rustic from an unknown Indian village, was a blaze of jnyana-shakti
that reduced great Hindu scholars into the likes of kindergarten
students? Have we not heard of his meetings with Pundit Ishwara Chandra
Vidyasagar and Pundit Shashadhar? The child of Kali might have been a
simple and artless person, but the discriminative Sword of Kali
never failed him. From where indeed did words like these arise in Sri
Ramakrishna:

“No one can say that God
is only ‘this’ and nothing else. He is formless, and again He has
forms. For the bhakta, He assumes forms. But He is formless for the
jnani, that is, for him who looks on the world as a mere dream. The
bhakta feels that he is one entity and the world another. Therefore
God reveals Himself to him as a Person. But the jnani – the
Vedantist, for instance – always reasons, applying the process of
‘not this, not this’. Through his discrimination he realizes, by
his inner perception, that the ego and the universe are both illusory,
like a dream. Then the jnani realizes Brahman in his own
consciousness. He cannot describe what Brahman is.

“Do you know what I
mean? Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a
shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the
bhakta’a love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In
other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and
reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of
Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn’t feel anymore
that God is a Person, nor does one see God’s forms. What He is
cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so
disappears. He cannot find his ‘I’ any more.

“In that state a man no
longer finds the existence of his ego. And who is there left to seek
it? Who can describe how he feels in that state – in his own Pure
Consciousness – about the real nature of Brahman? Once a salt doll
went to measure the depth of the ocean. No sooner was it in the water
than it melted. Now who was to tell its depth?

“There is a sign of
Perfect Knowledge. Man becomes silent when it is attained. Then the
‘I’ which may be likened to the salt doll, melts in the ocean of
Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute and becomes one with It. Not the
slightest trace of distinction is left.”

Tell me, Sir, you who say
that Sri Ramakrishna wasn’t familiar with the authentic teachings of
Hinduism, what these authentic teachings are. Before you dare to measure
the words of the saint, quote me those words of Sri Ramakrishna (giving
also the sources of your information) that you find so discordant with
the authentic teachings of Hinduism. We shall then see who it is that is
unfamiliar with the authentic teachings of Hinduism!

Unlike the lives of ancient
and medieval saints that come down to us through the mists of legendary
stories, we are fortunate to have the life of Sri Ramakrishna recorded
in fairly accurate detail. But it is clear that Dr. Morales has not
bothered to read them before writing his paper. How else does one
account for such callous words as these?

Despite
his Hindu roots, however, many of Ramakrishna’s ideas and practices
were derived, not from the ancient wisdom of classical Hinduism, but
from the non-Vedic religious outlooks of Islam and liberal
Christianity. Though he saw himself as being primarily Hindu,
Ramakrishna also resorted to worshipping in mosques and churches, and
believed that all religions aimed at the same supreme destination. He
experimented with Muslim, Christian and a wide variety of Hindu
practices, blending, mixing and matching practices and beliefs as they
appealed to him at any given moment.

Sri Ramakrishna had his
first vision of the Divine Mother when he was twenty years of age. The
year was 1856. For six years following this vision he practiced intense
sadhana in the tradition of bhakti and meditation, paths that are
intrinsic to Hinduism. In 1861, Ramakrishna met the Bhairavi Brahmani, a
Tantrik teacher who guided him in the path of this ancient esoteric
Hindu tradition. It may be noted that the tradition of Tantra has had
such great Hindu saints as Matsyendranatha, Gorakanatha, Utpaladeva,
Abhinavagupta, and in recent times, Jnanadeva. Sri Ramakrishna’s
Tantrik sadhana continued for four years until, in 1865, it culminated
in the highest goal that a bhakta may reach – the state of madhura
bhava which is the supreme bhakti that Sri Radha had for Lord Krishna, a
love supreme in which everything in the world becomes subservient to the
call of Divine Love. Shortly after this, Sri Ramakrishna met Totapuri,
an avadhuta who had spent 40 years of his life in the practice of
Advaita sadhana. Totapuri initiated Sri Ramakrishna into the esoteric
secrets of Vedanta, and within a short time Sri Ramakrishna attained the
vision of the unspeakable Non-Dual Truth. Totapuri stayed at
Dakshineswar for eleven months, and following his departure, Sri
Ramakrishna remained for a full six months in the ineffable state of
Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in complete neglect of his body and physical
well-being. These years mark the first phase of Sri Ramakrishna’s
sadhana – from the initial vision of the Divine Mother through the
various paths of bhakti and yoga to the final vision of the highest
Truth of Vedanta. When we recount all these years, we see that Sri
Ramakrishna spent almost ten years in intense practice that belonged to
the hallowed traditions of Hinduism. If Dr. Morales feels that
Ramakrishna’s ideas and practices were derived from Islam and
Christianity rather than from Hinduism, we can only conclude that Dr.
Morales’ fertile imagination is susceptible to strange excursions into
the land of fantasy.

It was only in 1866 – with
ten years of Hindu sadhana behind him - that Sri Ramakrishna met a Sufi
holy man and became eager to experience for himself how the Lord blessed
devotees who worshipped Him through the forms of Islam. The sadhana
lasted precisely for three days. It took place in the gardens of
Dakshineswar and not in a mosque. In the words of Richard Schiffman,
“this was followed by absorption in Allah, the Muslim God, whose
attributes, in turn, led into the formless Absolute, the Brahman. The
river of Sufi devotions had merged with the Hindu stream at the end in
the selfsame ocean of Spirit without either name or form.” Eight years
later, in 1874, Sri Ramakrishna undertook devotion to Christ. Again the
sadhana lasted only for a few days. And again, the sadhana took place in
the temple premises of Dakshineswar and not in a Church. It culminated
one afternoon in the vision and absorption into Christ wherein “the
two supreme lovers of God embraced, and merged into each other.
Ramakrishna was propelled into deep rapture, which once again opened
into the consciousness of the ineffable Brahman – the true wellspring
of spiritual experience known to all the great prophets of mankind, and
in which they are eternally united.” Ramakrishna recognised that Islam
and Christianity are forms of the same Spiritual Truth. In Kashmir
Shaivism, this recognition is called Ishvara Pratyabhijna.

To say that Sri Ramakrishna
resorted to worshipping in mosques and churches is to distort a few
singular events of his sadhana to make them appear as if they were
regular features of his life. Exaggeration is a kind of untruth.
Ramakrishna experiment once with Christianity and once with Islam, and
each time his sadhana lasted for a few days. The sadhana took place in
the gardens of Dakshineswar and not in mosques or churches. Anybody can
today read the biographies of Sri Ramakrishna to confirm that it is
thus. There is not a single biography that speaks of Sri Ramakrishna as
having regularly frequented mosques and churches or as having derived
his ideas and practices from Islam and Christianity. One expects more
veneration for truth than what Dr. Morales displays when discussing
Hindu saints.

We
encounter one of the first instances of the Radical Universalist
infiltration of Hinduism in the syncretistic teachings of Ram Mohan
Roy (1772-1833), the founder of the infamous Brahmo Samaj.

In
addition to acquiring Radical Universalism from the Christian
missionaries, Roy also felt it necessary to Christianize Hinduism by
adopting many Biblical theological beliefs into his new neo-Hindu
"reform" movement. Some of these other non-intrinsic
adaptations included a rejection of Hindu panentheism, to be
substituted with a more Biblical notion of anthropomorphic monotheism;
a rejection of all iconic worship ("graven images" as the
crypto-Christians of the Brahmo Samaj phrased it); and a repudiation
of the doctrine of avataras, or the divine descent of God.

In
1875, Ramakrishna met Keshub Chandra Sen, the then leader of the
neo-Hindu Brahmo Samaj, and formed a close working relationship with
him. Sen introduced Ramakrishna to the close-knit community of
neo-Hindu activists who lived in Calcutta, and would in turn often
bring these activists to Ramakrishna’s satsanghas.

If Dr. Morales is here
trying to say that the doctrine of the Brahmos was a form of Radical
Universalism, then he is obviously confused, because he contradicts this
very proposition by stating that the Brahmos rejected Hindu
‘panentheism’ as well as all forms of iconic worship6. If the
Brahmos were really Radical Universalists who believed that all
religions are the same, or that the paths of all religions led to the
same goal, they would have had no reason to reject Hindu ‘panentheism’
or iconic worship. Dr. Morales is actually disproving the hypothesis
that he claims to be proving!

The Brahmos were not
universalists in the true sense of the word. In founding the Brahmo
Samaj, Ram Mohan Roy had wished to institute a religion based on the
twin poles of Formless God and Reason. He rejected both the Advaita of
Shankara (the God of the Brahmos was a Formless God that created the
world ex-nihilo) as well as the idolatry of Hindu polytheism. Ram Mohan
Roy defined himself correctly as a Hindu Unitarian and not as a
Universalist. Dr. Morales is deluded if he thinks he is showing that
Hindu Universalism came from the Brahmo Samaj or that the Brahmos
influenced Sri Ramakrishna into accepting a universalism that didn’t
until then existed in Hinduism. It was in fact the Brahmos that were
deeply influenced in this respect by the saint; their constricted
notions of God slowly dissolved before the all-encompassing Universalism
of Sri Ramakrishna.

Sri Ramakrishna never met
Ram Mohan Roy; Roy died four years before Sri Ramakrishna was born.
Devendranath Tagore, the successor of Roy, met Sri Ramakrishna once
only; a second meeting that was planned between them never took place.
It was Keshab Chandra Sen among the Brahmos that shared the closest and
most intimate relationship with Sri Ramakrishna. This relationship was
not, as Dr. Morales claims, a working relationship. Sri Ramakrishna had
no work to do. He was unable to keep his wearing cloth on his body! His
work was to dissolve and let Reality work through him! But Reality had
decided that Keshab too would be Its instrument, for it was through
Keshab that the word of Sri Ramakrishna spread to the educated elite of
India, and it was again through Keshab that Sri Ramakrishna’s
universal vision of God percolated to the Brahmos. It would therefore be
appropriate for us to study this remarkable chapter in Indian history.

Keshab was a man of towering
intellect and deep sensitivities, gifted at once with an intensely
devotional nature and a restless mind, and altogether possessing a
mysterious disposition that only Sri Ramakrishna among all his
associations gauged fully. Even at an early age, Keshab had come under
the spell of Christ and he professed to have experienced the special
favour of John the Baptist, as well as of Jesus Christ and St. Paul. In
a letter written to one of his close disciples in 1866, he said:

“I have my own ideas
about Christ, but I am not bound to give them out in due form, until
altered circumstances of the country gradually develop them out of my
mind. Jesus is identical with self-sacrifice and as He lived and
preached in the fullness of time, so must He be in turn preached in
the fullness of time…. I am therefore, patiently waiting that I may
grow with the age and the nation and the spirit of Christ’s
sacrifice may grow therewith.”

Keshab’s faithfulness to
Christ was to remain right up to the end of his life. His abiding
allegiance to Christ needs to be seen against the backdrop of the
relationship he believed he had with Christ; for he believed that he was
the incarnation of Judas Iscariot, the thirteenth disciple of Jesus who
had betrayed the Son of God. In a sermon that was to come much later (in
1881) he was to declare:

“I must tell you….
that I am connected with Jesus’ Gospel, and occupy a prominent place
in it. I am the prodigal son of whom Christ spoke and I am trying to
return to my Father in a penitent spirit. Nay, I will say more for the
satisfaction and edification of my opponents… I am Judas, that vile
man who betrayed Jesus… the veritable Judas who sinned against the
truth. And Jesus lodges in my heart!”

Keshab was a giant who
eclipsed the other leaders of the Samaj that had come before him. He
roused immense enthusiasm during his triumphal visit to England,
addressing seventy meetings of 40000 people in six months, and
fascinating them with his musical speeches. He was compared to
Gladstone, the great Irish parliamentarian and reformist. While Keshab
enriched the doctrine of the Brahmos with the genius of his intellect,
at its core it remained eclectic in character, intellectually pieced
together from the best features of various religions. But despite his
contributions to the Brahmo cause, the flame of Christ burned intensely
in his heart. By 1866, he could no longer hide the inner propensity of
his soul, and when he strove to introduce Christ to the Samaj a rupture
became inevitable. In 1868 he broke with the older leader of the
movement and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, while the first Brahmo
Samaj under the leadership of Devendranath Tagore came to be
re-christened the Adi Samaj. In the aftermath of the schism, Keshab went
through a deep moral crisis, and, in the dark years of his despair, he
felt the voice of God speaking to him. Keshab emerged from the crisis
stronger than before, but the restlessness in his heart had not been
quelled. And then, in the year 1875, Keshab met Sri Ramakrishna. The
following description of their first meeting shows the kind of
relationship that sprang up between them.

Sri Ramakrishna’s face
was beaming with a divine radiance. A torrent of inspiring words
followed, which went straight to the hearts of the listeners. He spoke
of the innumerable manifestations of God, illustrating it by the
following parables:

“Some blind men happened
to come across an elephant. Someone told them what it was and asked
them to describe it as it seemed to them. The one who touched the leg
said, ‘The elephant is like a column’, the second one, ‘The
elephant is like a willowing fan’. He had touched one of its ears.
Similarly, those who had touched its trunk or belly, gave different
opinions. So with God, everyone conceives Him according to his
experience.”

Ramakrishna ridiculed the
attempt by the human mind to fathom the nature of God, by comparing it
to an ant that desired to carry a whole sugar-hill in its mouth. It is
God’s grace, he said, that leads to realisation. There was something
in the manner of his speech that convinced Keshab that Sri Ramakrishna
must have actually seen God. Stupefied and puzzled, Keshab Chandra,
the high priest of the Brahmo cult, felt like a child before this man
of realisation and listened to him with the utmost reverence. He
opened the doors of his heart, and every word uttered by the Master
found a permanent niche there.

Keshab was intensely moved
by Sri Ramakrishna, and in course of time this attraction developed into
deep reverence. He began to speak about Sri Ramakrishna in his sermons
and quoted him frequently in his writings. Soon, he became the
instrument through which the voice of Sri Ramakrishna reached the elite
of Bengal.

Words fail to describe the
reverence he felt for Sri Ramakrishna. If the Master came to the
Brahmo Samaj while Keshab was conducting Services, he would stop his
sermon and alight from the pulpit to greet him. At his home one day he
showed Sri Ramakrishna all the places where he sat or dined or lay or
studied, and requested him to bless them, so that they might always
suggest holy thoughts to his mind. It is even said on reliable
authority that he took the Master to his meditation room and there
worshipped him with flowers.

Whenever he visited
Dakshineswar he brought with him some offering in the way of fruits
etc., which he reverently placed before the Master, and sitting at his
feet like a humble disciple, drank in his words of wisdom. One day the
Master said to him in fun, ‘Keshab, you charm people with your
eloquence. Let me too hear something from you.’ Keshab modestly
replied, ‘I must not be vending needles in a blacksmith’s shop;
rather I should listen to you. It is your words repeated to people
that are appreciated so much.’

Keshab’s doctrine was
until now a mere intellectual synthesis; it was not the spontaneous and
effortless vision of a living religion. But his association with Sri
Ramakrishna broadened his vision and his eclecticism began to give way
to a more truly universal conception of God. To Keshab, God had been the
Father, but from Sri Ramakrishna he learnt that God is also the Mother,
that Brahman and His Maya are One. From Sri Ramakrishna, he learnt that
idol worship is not different than singing the glories of God’s
attributes. Sri Ramakrishna opened the floodgates of Keshab’s heart,
and its devotional outpouring deluged the Brahmo Samaj with a new
religious fervor and took it in a new direction. Sri Ramakrishna had
said to him:

‘Why do you dwell so
much upon the glories of God? Does a son, when with his father, think
of his father’s possessions – his houses, gardens, horses, and
cattle? On the contrary he thinks of his father’s love. He knows
that it is proper for a father to maintain his children and look out
for their welfare. We are all children of God. So what is there to
wonder at in His paternal care for us? The real devotee never thinks
about these things. He looks upon God as his very own – his nearest
and dearest – and says boldly, ‘Thou must fulfill my desires –
must reveal Thyself to me.’ If you dwell so much upon His glories,
you cannot think of Him as your own, nor can you feel intimate with
Him. You are awed by His majesty. He is no longer near. No, no, you
must think of Him as your nearest and dearest. Then only can you
realize Him.’

Keshab introduced the
singing of kirtans into the Brahmo Samaj, and from morning till night
the Samaj resounded to devotional hymns sung to the accompaniment of
Vaishnavite music. In 1878, in the midst of this growing fervour, there
was a second split in the Brahmo Samaj. This time it was brought about
by the marriage of his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained
the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. Keshab’s action came under
severe criticism and he was once again thrown into a crisis. And then,
out of the depths of his despair, there arose a new voice, a voice that
was still a whisper, but one that was to thunder its way across the seas
all the way to Europe. It was the stirrings of the New Dispensation.
Mazoomdar gives us an account of its genesis*******:

One evening while Keshab
lay in bed, and we had proceeded far into the excitement of such a
talk, he suddenly got up and said, there must be a great and
unprecedented Revival, if the Brahmo Samaj is to tide over the present
crisis. In devotions, disciplines, doctrines, and missionary
activities, there should be introduced all along the line such spirit
of Revival as had never yet been seen. We all concurred with the idea,
but we did not perceive that what Keshab said was the result of long
and intense mediation and much earnest prayer, that it boded a kind of
activity for which none of us was prepared. When therefore Keshab
spoke of a Revival in 1879, he meant a further advance, a greater
advance than had been ever made before, on the lines of a new
revelation, a new life, altogether a new departure.

The Revival was the New
Dispensation. It was born out of the vision fashioned in his heart by
Sri Ramakrishna. It was a vision of the Vedic God, but Keshab covered It
with the name of Christ. Perhaps the New Dispensation was his atonement
for his terrible betrayal of the Son of God. He announced it to his
Hindu brethren in 1880 in his famous Epistle to the Indian Brethren:

“Paul wrote full of
faith in Christ. As a theist I write to you this, my humble epistle,
at the feet, not of one prophet only, but of all the prophets in
heaven and earth, living or dead….”

“The New Dispensation is
the prophesy of Christ fulfilled…. The Omnipotent speaks today to
our country as formerly He did to other nations….”

“The Spirit of God and
my inner self are knit together, If you have seen me, you have seen
Him….”

In the same year, Keshab
also sent out a proclamation declaring the God as Mother:

“A New Dispensation has
come down upon the Brahmo Samaj which proclaims a new programme to
India. Its chief merit is its freshness, and its own watchword is –
God, the Mother of India…. all its changes are rung upon that single
word – God Mother.”

According to the New
Dispensation, God, out of His boundless love for man, incarnates on
earth from time to time. As sleeping Logos, Christ lives potentially in
the Father’s bosom. He had lived long, long before he came into this
world of ours as Christ. He came in Greece and India, Egypt and China,
he came in the form of the Rg-Veda poets, he came in the form of
Confucius, and he came in many countries and in many forms. Clearly, the
vision was Hindu, but in Keshab’s eyes it bore the name of Christ. The
New Dispensation was not merely Christ coming to India, but Christ
coming to the entire world – for the New Dispensation was proclaimed
as the true revelation of Christ that the West had narrowed and reified
into a form of iconic worship. These words of Keshab were aimed not at
the Hindus, but at the West:

“Begone, idolatry!
Preachers of idol-worship, adieu!”

“Sectarian and carnal
Europe, put into the scabbard the sword of your narrow faith! Abjure
it and join the true Catholic and Universal Church in the name of
Christ, the Son of God!….”

He was convinced that the
West had not understood Christ, and that the New Dispensation was ‘an
institution of the Holy Spirit that completes the Old and New
Testaments’:

“Christian Europe has
not understood one half of Christ’s words. She has comprehended that
Christ and God are one, but not that Christ and humanity are one. That
is the great mystery, which the New Dispensation reveals to the world:
not only the reconciliation of man with God; but the reconciliation of
man with man!”

The sequence of events that
we have so far delineated belies the charge that Hindu Universalism was
the infiltration of a Western idea into Hinduism, or ‘the
Christianisation of Hindu theology’ as Dr. Morales calls it. The
New Dispensation is proof that the current of history actually flowed in
the reverse direction - originating in a Hindu source and moving towards
the Universalisation of Christian theology in the New
Dispensation.

Even when the inspirational
storm of the New Dispensation was blowing in his mind, Keshab could not
resist the pull of Sri Ramakrishna and the Divine Mother. He had become
an ardent devotee of Mother Kali, and he would often cry at the mention
of Her name. Yet the New Dispensation never stopped tugging at his
heart. Sri Ramakrishna saw the inner turmoil in Keshab’s soul and
treated him with extreme tenderness and consideration. Keshab became
seriously ill in 1883, and soon afterwards, in January 1884, he
succumbed to his illness. Sri Ramakrishna visited him a few weeks before
his death and spoke to him profound words that were like a balm to the
hidden wounds of the dying man; and the two devotees then talked nothing
but God. It is said that Keshab spoke to the Divine Mother from his
deathbed, and that in his last moments he laughed and wept in divine
ecstasy.

It was not only Keshab but
many of the Brahmos that came under the sway of Sri Ramakrishna’s
influence. Here is an account from one of Sri Ramakrishna’s
biographies:

Having realized God in His
different aspects, relative as well as Absolute, Sri Ramakrishna had
not difficulty in guiding these devotees (Brahmos) along their own
lines, at the same time removing their prejudices so that they might
concentrate their whole energy upon the search for God. Knowing that
they would not be able to follow his teachings in their entirety, he
told them to take as much as they could and reject the rest.

The Brahmos gained a
broader and more comprehensive idea about God from the teachings of
Sri Ramakrishna. He would say to them, ‘None can limit God by saying
that he has known all about Him. He has form, and again He is without
form. Who knows how many aspects He has!’….. The Brahmos began to
appreciate that there was much significance behind image worship – a
practice which they used to call idolatry. From Sri Ramakrishna they
learnt that Brahman and Its manifestations are inseparable.

We have in the words
hereinabove briefly outlined how it was that the tide of Hindu
Universalism flowed from Sri Ramakrishna to the hearts of Keshab Chandra
Sen and the Brahmos. If these words still fail to convince our readers
that this was the direction in which the idea of Hindu Universalism
flowed, then the final verdict must lie with the words of Pratap
Mazoomdar, a Brahmo himself and a disciple of Keshab Sen, who writes:

What is there in common
between him and me? I, a Europeanised, civilised, self-centred, semi-sceptical,
so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished,
half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours
to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett,
Stanley and Max Muller, and a host of European scholars and
divines?….. And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the
same….. He worships Shiva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he
worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic
doctrines….. He is an idolator, yet is faithful and most devoted
meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite
Deity….. His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental
insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire
and fever of a strange faith and feeling….. So long as he is spared
to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime
precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in
the love of God….. He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong
conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it in our
minds wonderfully….. By associating with him we learnt to realise
better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and
thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the
Puranas.

Sri Ramakrishna’s
universal vision was not, as Dr. Morales claims, due to the influence of
the Brahmo Samaj or Keshab Sen. Sri Ramakrishna was influenced by only
one thing, and that one thing was God! It speaks out of the pages of his
biographies – if one cares to read them!
In conclusion, we would like to state that Dr. Morales fails to provide
a single argument to substantiate his claims - he merely gives us his
blinkered opinions instead. Dr. Morales is welcome to outline the
biography of Sri Ramakrishna and show us that his dogmatic opinions have
a base, but until then we are fully justified in classifying the words
of Dr. Morales as a work of pure fiction.

Swami Vivekananda and the
Will to Heroism

Not being content with his apostasy
against Sri Ramakrishna, Dr. Morales proceeds to give us his warped
opinions about the great Hindu lion-heart, Swami Vivekananda:

Notwithstanding
his remarkable undertakings, however, Vivekananda found himself in a
similarly difficult position as other neo-Hindu leaders of his day
were. How to make sense of the ancient ways of Hinduism, and hopefully
preserve Hinduism, in the face of the overwhelming onslaught of
modernity? Despite some positive contributions by Vivekananda and
other neo-Hindus in attempting to formulate a Hindu response to the
challenge of modernity, that response was often made at the expense of
authentic Hindu teachings. Vivekananda, along with the other leaders
of the neo-Hindu movement, felt it was necessary to both water down
the authentic Hinduism of their ancestors, and to adopt such foreign
ideas as Radical Universalism, with the hope of gaining the approval
of the European masters they found ruling over them.

This is how Romain Rolland
describes the man that Dr. Morales accuses of stooping to gain the
approval of European masters:

“His pre-eminent
characteristic was kingliness. He was a born king and nobody ever came
near him either in India or America without paying homage to his
majesty.”

“It was impossible to
imagine him in the second place. Wherever he went, he was the first.
Even his master Ramakrishna, in a vision which I have related,
represented himself with regard to his disciple as child beside a
great Rishi. It was in vain that Vivekananda refused to accept such
homage, judging himself severely and humiliating himself – everybody
recognized in him at sight the leader, the anointed of God, the man
marked with the stamp of power to command. A traveller who crossed his
path in the Himalayas without knowing who he was, stooped in
amazement, and cried, ‘Shiva’ … It was as if his chosen God had
imprinted His name upon his forehead.”

When Vivekananda, the
unknown Indian monk, began his speech in the Parliament of Religions,
the whole assembly rose up unbidden, and they knew not why! If there is
one trait of Vivekananda that comes across consistently from all his
biographies, it is this: he never stooped to the opinions of anyone, be
it a saint of a European master! Vivekananda walked like an unsheathed
sword. He abhorred hypocrisy and never hesitated to strike down any form
of sham. This trait of Vivekananda has been recorded uniformly in all
his biographies, and it echoes in these words that he once spoke to his
sannyasi brethren:

“Bravery is the highest
virtue. Dare to speak the whole truth always, to all without
distinction, without equivocation, without fear, without compromise.
Do not trouble about the rich and great. The Sannyasin should have
nothing to do with the rich. To pay respects to the rich and hang on
to them for support is conduct which becomes a public woman.”

Dr. Morales suffers from
some kind of delusion in saying that Vivekananda diluted Hinduism to
cater to foreign masters! Vivekananda was a fire! A fire doesn’t bow
down; it burns, it roars, it reduces everything that stands before it to
ashes! To say that he wilfully watered down authentic Hindu teachings to
gain the approval of European masters is not only false, but it is
blatantly offensive to the Hindu who regards Vivekananda as a man in the
mould of the raja-rishi, Visvamitra.

Many thousands of sages and
holy men have enriched the soil of Hinduism. Not all of them were alike.
Some came as saints that sang and danced from the divine ecstasy of
their devotions. Some came as acharyas to expound the scriptures and
establish the Vedantic path. Sri Shankaracharya, Sri Ramanujacharya and
Sri Madhvacharya were in this mould. Vivekananda was not an acharya; he
did not come to this world to establish any particular darshana. He had
a different role to play here. He came to awaken, not to formulate Hindu
doctrinal responses to modernity.

“Is man a tiny boat in a
tempest, raised one moment on a foamy crest of a billow and dashed
down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of
good and bad actions? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law
of Nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? The Vedic sage
replies – ‘Hear, ye children of immortal bliss, even ye that
reside in higher spheres: I have found the Ancient One who is beyond
all darkness, all delusions: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from
death over again.’ Ye are the children of God, the sharers of
immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth –
sinners! It is a sin to call man so; it is a standing libel on human
nature.”

Though Vivekananda’s
message was centred in Vedanta, he delivered it with a freedom of form
that suited the purpose of rousing the sleeping Hindu. Had it not been
for Vivekananda, the mental sloth that possessed the average Hindu at
the end of the nineteenth century would probably have sunk him to the
lowest level of servility. Vivekananda was the fire that burned through
the sleep of the Hindus and stirred them to rise from their inertia, and
this fire sometimes burned in strange ways:

“Who cares for your
Ramakrishna? Who cares for your Bhakti and Mukti? Who cares what your
scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully, if I can
rouse my countrymen immersed in Tamas, to stand on their own feet and
be men inspired with the spirit of Karma-Yoga…. I am not a servant
of Ramakrishna, or anyone, but of him only who serves and helps
others, without caring for his own Bhakti or Mukti?”

A sadhaka on the path of
Vedanta needs to have adhikara. This adhikara comes from his
predispositions and his readiness for Grace. Vivekananda saw that the
majority of the Hindus at the end of the nineteenth century were sunk in
self-service and servility. Servility is another form of self-service.
Vivekananda knew that it is futile to speak Vedanta to the servile.
Vivekananda came not to preach Vedanta; he came to awaken the Hindu from
self-service to the service of God in humanity.

“Why is it that we,
three hundred and thirty millions of people, have been ruled for the
last thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners?….
Because they had faith in themselves and we had not…. I read in the
newspapers how when one of our poor fellows is murdered or ill-treated
by an Englishman, howls go all over the country; I read and I weep,
and the next moment comes to my mind who is responsible for it all….
Not the English…. It is we who are responsible for all our…
degradation. Our aristocratic ancestors went on treading the common
masses of our country underfoot, till they became helpless, till under
this torment the poor, poor people nearly forgot that they were human
beings. They have been compelled to be merely hewers of wood and
drawers of water for centuries, so…. That they are made to believe
that they are born as slaves, born as hewers of wood and drawers of
water.”

“Let her arise – out
of the peasants’ cottage, grasping the plough, out of the huts of
the fisherman,…. the grocer’s shop, from beside the oven of the
fritter-seller. Let her emanate from the factory, from marts and from
markets. Let her emerge from the groves and forests, from hills and
mountains. These common people have suffered oppression for thousands
of years – suffered it without murmur, and as a result have got
wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has
given them unflinching vitality…. Such peacefulness, such
contentment, such love, such power of silent and incessant work, and
such manifestation of lion’s strength in times of action – where
else will you find these! Skeletons of the past, there, before you are
your successors, the India that is to be. Throw those treasure-chests
of yours and those jewelled rings among them – as soon as you can;
and you – vanish into air, and be seen no more.” ********

Only in selfless service can
vairagya take root and make one worthy to take on Vedanta, the
conquest of the last barrier of the soul. These words of Vivekananda
still ring in our ears today:

“If you seek your own
salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of others that you
must seek…. and even if you have to go to hell in working for
others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own
salvation….. Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I
will also sacrifice my life; you also, every one of you, should do the
same. All these works and so forth are only a beginning. Believe me,
from the shedding of our blood will arise gigantic, heroic workers and
warriors of God who will revolutionize the whole world.”

Vivekananda once said to
Nivedita that the heart must become like a cremation ground – its
pride, selfishness, desire, all burnt to ashes. In Vivekananda we see
not the dissections of Hindu doctrinal tenets, but the will to
heroism, and his words, his actions, and his life were the burning
fire that stirred the heart of the Hindu to rise from his slumber and to
take pride once again in being a Hindu. Romain Rolland describes the
power of Vivekananda’s words thus:

“His words are great
music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhymes like the
march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his,
scattered as they are through the pages of books at thirty years’
distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric
shock. And what shocks, what transports must have been produced when
in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!”

The hero was the voice of a
resurgent Hinduism. At a time when the educated Hindu had begun to be
ashamed of his own religion, when the downtrodden Hindu was sunk in
abject poverty and had not food enough to eat, when the voiceless Hindu
watched in dismay his religion being sacked by the Indologists on one
hand and the Hindu reformists on the other, Vivekananda was the hero
that brought back the glory of Hindu religion, epitomizing both the
pursuit of the highest Truth and the selfless service of God in
humanity. It is a travesty of truth to accuse Vivekananda of diluting
the teachings of Hinduism. Let him that accuses Vivekananda first bring
to us genuine arguments instead of hollow superfluities! Ironically, it
is Dr. Morales that is watering down the teachings of Hinduism by
denying to it the great universalism that lies in its heart! As regards
Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, we can hardly do better than to echo
the words of Richard Schiffman:

“The Baul had come and
gone. But his band would continue to dance their way through nearly
half of the twentieth century. Through most of the nations of the
earth, through India, through the alien lands of Europe and America
and the Far East, they would dance their heady dance – unsung,
unknown perhaps to the great mass of men, but not without sowing the
flaming seeds of Love on the winds of the dark age of untruth.”

There is one last thing that
needs to be said here and it is this. Before one sits in judgment over
Hindu saints, it is better to be immersed oneself in the living waters
of Hinduism. Theories and papers are dry academics. Hinduism is not an
institutionalized religion. It is a religion that flows out from the
breath of Being; it sings in the wide open spaces, it takes root like
the seed that falls on the ground, and like the seed it sprouts silently
to rise up like a grand poem; it gushes out of the earth like spring
waters to merge in the hearts of the Hindus just as spring waters merge
into the fields where the rice and the corn grow. Hinduism has no fixed
contours; it cannot be caged in a box. It is nowhere to be grasped
precisely, and it is everywhere like the tune of an ineffable song. It
has a deep structure, but its roots are elsewhere and it is only the
branches that are seen here. Hinduism knows how to hide its secrets well
- even when you announce it to the world! It remains esoteric to the
closed heart, but it reveals its secrets to the simple of heart, to the
pure of mind, to him that surrenders herself to the harmony of the
Ubiquitous Breath. Hinduism is a religion of tears, of the finest
emotion, of the greatest sacrifice, of the supreme zenith of intellect.
And even of transgression. Even of the pariah and the outcaste, and the
butcher and the murderer. Who shall here define Hinduism? The Vedas
stands at its summit, but what about the Tantras?

Universalism and Relativism

Dr. Morales presents
universalism as if it is a kind of relativism that is opposed to
absolute truth. The gist of the argument may be obtained from these
words:

To
say that "all religions are the same" is to also claim that
"the moral systems of all religions are the same." In turn,
to claim that all ethical systems are correct is ultimately to negate
all ethical systems altogether, which is precisely the goal of the
philosophical project known as Ethical Relativism.

Radical
Universalism leads, via consecutive logical sequence, directly to
relativism, both ethical and philosophical….the unstable, shifting
sands of Relativism, in all its varied forms, has been recognized by
countless generations of spiritual teachers as being a baseless and
imperfect foundation upon which to base one’s search for the
Absolute and Perfect (God).

But Hinduism does not say
that the moral and ethical prescriptions of different systems are the
same (or equal). It says that the moral and ethical systems of different
religions are each valid in so far as they are applicable to the members
of the respective religion. It says that it is not right for a Hindu to
follow the moral and ethical rules prescribed for a Christian just as it
is not right for a Christian to follow the moral and ethical rules
prescribed for a Hindu. But each is valid in its own right, as
applicable within the sphere of its own manifested domain. The nature of
dharma is difficult to understand and it requires an appreciation of the
Eternal Dharma to comprehend the variations that are found in the moral
codes of different religions. Considering that this topic would need a
somewhat rigorous treatment, we shall attempt to answer the question
regarding the variations of moral codes after we have treated the
subject in greater detail in the next section. In this section, we shall
endeavor to show that universalism is not relativism, but is indeed
another aspect of absolutism.

By placing Universalism in
opposition to Absolutism, Dr. Morales tries to create the impression
that Universalism is a kind of Relativism. But this opposition has no
basis to stand on. Universalism is based on absolutes. Since both universalism
and relativism are terms that have sprung out of the Western
philosophical lexicon, it would be appropriate to go to the origins of
these terms as they appear in Western thought.

The term universalism comes
from the word ‘universe’ which means all things regarded
as a whole. Universalism is a doctrine that encompasses all things
– the universe - by seeing the sameness that is in them. Now what is
same in different things is the universal (samanya). For example,
the universal, redness, is that which is same in all red things.
Universalism is therefore rooted to the nature of universals. In Greek
philosophy, a universal is an eternal unchanging Form that participates
in the things of the world and gives to these things the forms that we
recognize in them. This is the meaning of the term universal as it first
appears in the pages of Western philosophy. It is the central theme of
Plato’s philosophy, and its meaning is brought out beautifully in the
dialogues of the great Athenian, Socrates. The universal is the Ideal
Form by virtue of which a form of this sensible world is what it is seen
to be. These words from the Phaedo evocate the meaning of the
term universal:

"It seems to me that
whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute Beauty is beautiful
because it partakes of that absolute Beauty, and for no other reason.
.... Well, now, that is as far as my mind goes; I cannot understand
these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that
the reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous
colour or shape or any other such attribute, I disregard all these
other explanations - I find them all confusing - and I cling simply
and straightforwardly and no doubt foolishly to the explanation that
the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it
or association with it of absolute Beauty."

Universals are absolutes.
They are the eternal stamps of things in Reality (see Theaetetus) and to
behold them is to behold eternity as it were. Universalism is the
insight into the eternal and the unchanging Forms as it appears in the
realm of change. It would therefore be absurd to equate universalism
with relativism. Now, while the term universal has its origin in Plato,
the genesis of relativism may be found in Protagoras, another
Greek and a contemporary of Socrates. It was Protagoras who had said:
‘Man is the measure of all things’. In the Theaetetus,
Plato deflates the arguments of Protagoras and demonstrates that the
natures of things are beyond change. But the philosophy of Protagoras
has reappeared today in the guise of Post-Modernism proclaiming once
again that there is nothing beyond belief-systems. Whether it is
Protagoras’ doctrine that man is the measure of all things or the
Post-Modern belief that there is nothing beyond belief-systems, the
central theme of relativism is that there is no truth, that it is man
that gives to things the illusion of reality. Clearly universalism and
relativism are two poles that are as apart as can be.

Universals are independent
of the whims of the mind – they are the eternal stamps of truth in
Reality. Socrates calls it the gift of Memory, and the mother of the
Muses. He says that these universals are the impressions in the ‘wax
of the soul’, and that the capacity for knowledge and error depend
on the purity of the wax that is in the soul. (Theaetetus).
This doctrine goes hand in hand with Plato’s doctrine of recollection,
a doctrine which says that knowledge is the recollection of the truth
that already lies within the soul. The language of Plato may be
metaphorical, but it is nevertheless deeply resonant with the doctrine
of Pratyabhijna in Kashmir Shaivism. All recognition is a reflection of sakshi-chaitanya.
It is the recognition of the bimba in the pratibimba.

Maya covers all. Vidya
uncovers it and shows the truth. Verily it is pratyabhijna that proves
the validity of all means of knowledge. (From Manasallosa,
Suresvara’s commentary on Shankaracharya’s Dakshinamurthy Stotra).

Universalism is based on the
doctrine of Pratyabhijna. Pratyabhijna is the recognition of That which
is eternally same in all things. The doctrine of Pratyabhijna has deep
bonds with Plato’s doctrine of Ideal Forms from which comes the term
universal that is at the root of Universalism.

Universal Dharma – The
Ethical Dimension

We have shown in the
previous section how universalism is opposed to relativism, but there is
still one question that remains to be answered, and the question is: How
is it possible for different and contradictory moral codes to be equally
valid at the same time? We shall now attempt to answer this crucial
question.

The problem of morality is
one of the most enigmatic problems of human existence. To most of us
that have been fed on modern fare, it would seem absurd that there could
be different and contradictory moral codes that are valid at the same
time. Modern acculturation would have us believe that moral and ethical
systems must everywhere be uniform, and it is this belief that leads Dr.
Morales to equate universalism with ethical relativism.

When
the assertion that "all religions are the same" is made, it
is also automatically inferred that the moral systems of all religions
are the same as well – even if many of the rules of these moral
systems are diametrically opposed to one another. In supporting
Radical Universalism, the ethically barren conclusions of Ethical
Relativism are also naturally supported. The consequent results are
that moral proscriptions and prescriptions that are otherwise
contradictory and mutually exclusive are seen as equally valid – a
position that cannot be logically asserted. To support Radical
Universalism is to say that being violent and being non-violent, to be
tolerant and to be intolerant, to have compassion and to have
religiously inspired hate are all morally equivalent. The idea that
there can be moral equivalency of diametrically opposed moral rules is
not upheld by any religion on earth, Hinduism included.

Strange as it may sound to
modern ears, the validity of contrary, and sometimes even opposite,
moral rules is a part of the Eternal Dharma. Moral codes are not the
same for everyone. The fundamental mistake that is often made while
speaking about moral codes is to consider them as being uniformly
applicable to all. But the moral code for a husband is different than
the moral code for a wife, and the moral code for a hangman is different
than the moral code for a priest. Moral codes vary with time, place and
situation though ultimately all these variations are constituted in the
One Eternal Dharma. In asking about morality, we are verily knocking on
the doors of the Divine Order, and we must be ready to pause and open
our eyes before we profess to answer them, for the workings of dharma
are not easy to comprehend.

What is the meaning of
Dharma? In Hinduism, Dharma is not an order that has been proclaimed by
God; it is God Himself in the Natural Order of the Universe. The word dharma
translates to nature, and therefore the dharma of a thing is the
very nature of a thing. It is the dharma of a rose to be a rose, and the
dharma of a tree to be a tree. Likewise, it is the dharma of a husband
to be a husband, and the dharma of a wife to be a wife, and the dharma
of a son to be a son, and the dharma of a father to be a father.
According to the Vedas, Dharma is Rtam, the meaning that is in
Brahman. This world is not other than the meaning in God that has
blossomed into creation through the unfolding of vivarta. God creates
through the sabda (word) that is in Him, and His creation is the artha
within Himself brought forth into manifest form. Rtam is therefore this
world as the artha unfolded in Brahman, and Brahman remains
always the sat – the truth - of all things in the world. Therefore
Rtam is always seated in Satyam, and the Heart of Dharma is Truth. Rtam
is the eternal nature of the Kshetra in the Kshetrajna, it is the Lower
Nature that is held in the Higher. The Higher is the province of Its
Governance and the Lower is the field of Its Leela, but they are never
two.

One who clings fast to
Eternal Truth
Will attain Ultimate Truth Itself.
The strength of Rta, Eternal Order, is far reaching
It brings wisdom to those that pursue it.
Earth and Heaven owe their existence to Rta.
And the Supreme Powers yield their ambrosial milk,
their treasured contents,
In perfect obedience to the Lord of Eternal Existence.
(Rg Veda.IV.23.1):

Now there arises this
question: If dharma is the nature of a thing, and all things in this
world exist according to their own natures, then how indeed can there be
adharma in this world? How is it possible that there may be
something that is not in accordance with its own nature? In order to
answer this question, we must recognize that adharma arises only
in a conscious locus that is subject to avidya. It is only
through avidya that a soul may see untruth and it is only due to
the ahamkara wrought by avidya that a jiva may
behold the illusion of the Self as an agent of action.

Actions are wrought in all
cases by the gunas of Prakriti. He whose mind is deluded by ahamkara
thinks ‘I am the doer.’ (Bh.Gita.III.27)

The locus of adharma is
therefore the jiva that has chaitanya and will. A rose can never be
anything but a rose because it has no will to be otherwise. It may
appear to be other than what it is only in the vision of a jiva that is
gifted with consciousness and will – and avidya. It is due to avidya
that there arises the great mystery of this world - that untruth
paradoxically comes to be, for it is indeed a paradox to say that there
is in reality an untruth. For if it is, it is truth, and it can be
untruth only by not being. In Advaita Vedanta, untruth is neither being
nor non-being, but is the loss of genuineness of a thing’s being; it
is adhyasa, one thing appearing as another. It is the paradoxical nature
of Maya in which there is the loss of distinction between the real and
unreal. The twin poles of truth and untruth arise in vyavaharika
sathya, which is the Truth of Paramartha filtered through the
lens of one’s avidya to present a paradoxical world whose
truth can never be determined, for it is never possible to determine the
true nature of something that partakes of falsity. It is therefore anirvacaniya,
epistemologically indeterminable. The truth of a thing seen in samsara
is not found by looking for it in the thing that is seen, but by
removing one’s avidya so that its truth is seen naturally in
the Light of the Sun. In Advaita Vedanta, avidya is not a thing
to be removed; it is the sleep of looking at the world with unseeing
eyes. Awakening is the opening of the eye – the Third Eye. In the
sleep of samsara, the will wills in ways contrary to the truth. This
defiant act of the will is adharma. The will cannot change the
Truth, but it can present the Truth in Time as the balance of justice in
the Dharma Chakra. It is the Wheel of Dharma that governs the
actions of all beings and bestows upon them the results in accordance
with their actions:

He who follows not here the Chakra thus set in motion, who is of
sinful life, indulging in the senses, he lives in vain, O son of
Pritha. (Bh.Gita.III.16)

The field of dharma is the
field of human action. Human action arises only in samsara wherein a
jiva is subject to avidya. The jiva’s agency for action cannot exist
in the Light of Knowledge:

O Arjuna, as a blazing
fire reduces pieces of wood to ashes, similarly the fire of Knowledge
reduces all actions to ashes. (Bh.Gita.IV.37)

Samsara is the journey of
the soul in the deep sleep of avidya. It is called the anadi bija
nidra, the beginning-less sleep without end. It is Maharatri, the
Great Night of Darkness. Its end is not an end in time, but is the
opposite of sleep which is the Awakening into the Light of Eternity. In
samsara, the Bliss of Self is masked by avidya and the soul is
therefore always trying to attain the inner ecstasy that it has lost,
and hence arises its first purushartha, kama, the pursuit of
pleasure. Kama is essentially the pursuit of the erotic, and while its
most common goal is sexual pleasure, it is also the pursuit of beauty
and art because the absorption attained by the soul in aesthetics is the
merging of subject and object, which is the essence of the erotic. The
subject is the purusha in the body and the object is prakriti,
and in absorption he enjoys union with her. This is the reason
why aesthetics, or gandharva shastra, is the overarching paradigm
of kama shastra.*X.

Again, in samsara, the soul
that is essentially one with the Infinite Brahman is ‘contracted’
into the limited self within the body, and it is always trying to make
up for the loss of its innate infinitude and hence there arises the
second purushartha, artha, which is the pursuit of wealth,
objects, fame, etc. Avidya is beginningless – no one knows when it all
began – and the unpaid debts due to other beings that it has
accumulated in its journey have to be repaid and thus arises the third
purushartha, the pursuit of dharma. And when the soul has tired of being
tossed about in this ocean of samsara, it yearns for the freedom of
eternity and the seeking that arises from this yearning is the fourth
purushartha, the pursuit of moksha. Thus there arise in the field of
human activity the four purusharthas – kama, artha, dharma and
moksha.

Sanatana Dharma is divided
two-fold in accordance with the two-fold directedness of human actions,
the directedness to kama, artha and dharma, comprising and
the path of works, and the directedness to moksha being the path of
renunciation. It is this two-fold Eternal Dharma that holds the universe
in place including both the stability of the created world and the
preservation of the esoteric path for the soul to fly from the shadow of
the ephemeral to the Light of the Eternal. Regarding this, Sri
Shankaracharya writes:

The Lord created the
universe, and wishing to secure order therein He first created the
Prajapatis (Lords of the creatures) such as Marichi and caused them to
adopt the Pravritti-Dharma, the Religion of Works. He then created
others such as Sanaka and Sanandana and caused them to adopt the
Nivritti-Dharma, the Religion of Renunciation, characterised by
knowledge and indifference to works. It is the two-fold Vedic Dharma
of Works and Renunciation that maintains order in the universe. (Shankara’s
Gita bhashya, Introduction).

The Eternal Dharma seen
through the lens of Time is the Wheel of Dharma. Under the governance of
the Wheel of Dharma, the soul acquires various bodies as it journeys
through time. But the various bodies that a soul acquires are eternally
existent in Brahman. They exist as the artha in the
Purushartha. The soul in samsara merely comes to reside in these bodies
as given to it by its own past actions. The Yoga Sutra says:

"Good and bad deeds
are not the direct causes in transformations, but they act as breakers
of obstacles to nature, as a farmer breaks the obstacles to the course
of water, which then runs down by its own nature." (YS,IV,3).

When a soul casts off one
body and is yet to acquire another, it retains the impressions gained
from its past births. These impressions are its sukshuma sharira,
the subtle body. When a person dies, the soul merely disengages itself
from the gross body; its gross eyes are gone, but its sense of sight is
not gone; its gross ears are gone, but its sense of hearing is not gone;
its hands and legs are gone, but its sense of grasping and locomotion
are not gone. These are part of its sukshuma sharira – the
subtle body - with which it wanders about from birth to birth. The sukshuma
sharira is the body comprised of the inner four sheaths out of the
five sheaths that an embodied being in this world possesses. The
five sheaths of an embodied being are the annamayakosha, the pranamayakosha,
the manomayakosha, the vijnanamayakosha, and the anandamayakosha.
The inner four sheaths from the anandamayakosha to the pranamayakosha
remain with the soul even when the soul disengages itself from the gross
body. That is why a person is said to die when prana leaves the
body. Prana presents itself as breath in the gross body, but it
is in actuality the life-current that animates the gross body through
the manifestation of breath. Now, all of nature is composed of the three
gunas – rajas, sattva and tamas. The gradation of
bodies in the world depends on the admixture of the gunas that
are in them. The distribution of the gunas in the sukshuma
sharira – the impressions from its actions in its previous lives -
determines the body that the soul is given by the Lord’s Chakra when
it is reborn into this world. Lord Krishna says in the Gita:

The four varnas have been
created by Me according to the distribution of the gunas and the
karmas; though I am the author thereof, know Me as non-agent and
immutable. (IV.13)

The dharma of a soul is to
follow the dharma of the body given to it by the Wheel of Justice. The
dharma of a soul that is born as a man is to follow the dharma of a man,
and the dharma of a soul that is born as a dog is to follow the dharma
of a dog. Right and wrong actions of a soul depend on the body that it
possesses at the time when it is performing those actions. That is why
Shankara, the sannyasi, was not polluted by loss of celibacy even though
he had sported with the queens of Amuraka when occupying the body of the
king.*XI

To know what dharma is, it
is necessary to know what swadharma is because it is a thing’s swadharma
that is the reference against which actions are measured as right and
wrong. Now, this world is name and form, and to know a thing is to know
the name and the form that is true to the name. To know
the true form of a thing is to know the intrinsic attributes of the
thing. The intrinsic attributes of a thing – the attributes that are
one with it - is its swadharma. It is the swadharma of fire to burn, and
of water to flow. (Action is also an attribute of a thing, for we do not
see mere action in this world, but see it as the attribute of something
that is acting.) The swadharma of all things lies in the artha
that is the Divine Rtam in Brahman. It is the name and the meaning – the
form that is true to the name - as it exists eternally in Brahman.
The body that a soul is identified with in a given birth has its own
intrinsic nature – its swadharma - and it is the dharma of a
jiva to act in accordance with the swadharma of the body and the station
that it naturally comes to possess in the world. Men and women are not
given their bodies and stations by accident. The Wheel of Dharma has
given it to them due to their past-actions and the duties of the bodies
and stations they now occupy are the actions required for balancing the
actions of the past. By following dharma – by being true to the
swadharma of the bodies and stations given to them - they would be
repaying the debts accruing to them from their past actions. Thus, the
injunctions of dharma regarding the duties of stations for men and women
are not mere normative principles; they are the prescriptions derived
from the workings of the Dharma Chakra. These duties, laid down in the
Dharma Shastras, are the manners in which the debts accruing from past
lives may be repaid. The actions required to repay these past debts are
called nitya karma, the necessary duties of a man or woman. There
is no choice but to perform them because there is no choice in the
matter of repayment of debts. In performing them - by being true to the
station that one is born in - one repays the debts of the past and
becomes free to that extent from one’s past karma. One then lives
lightly, for the flavor of a live lived according to dharma is sweet.

To follow dharma is to act
in accordance with one’s swadharma. It is being true to the name one
bears. In deviating from one’s swadharma, one is not true to the name
that one bears. Being true to the name is to conform to Rtam, the
meaning that is in Brahman. In the great Confucian Way of the Tao,
this principle is called the Doctrine of Rectification of Names.*XII

Dharma is Rtam, the meaning
that is in Brahman. In speaking truly about the world, it is the dharma
of speaking the truth. In being true to oneself, it is the dharma of
acting according to one’s swadharma. Men and women follow dharma by
being true to their swadharmas, to those actions that are contained in
the meanings of the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as they exist in
Brahman. These are the duties that govern the dharma of men and women in
the field of His Leela. But men and women are not merely men and women,
they are also many other things that men and women may be such as sons
and daughters, fathers and mothers, kings and queens, priests, warriors,
servants, maids, lords, ladies, physicians, nurses, drivers,
prison-keepers, and many other things. They may be Hindus or Christians
or Muslims or Buddhists or Zoroastrians or Pagans. It is not in the
swadharma of a king to choose to be a thief or in the swadharma of a
wife to choose to be a public woman. They would cease to be a king or
wife in so far as they choose these occupations, and thus they would be
violating their dharma. But if a king were to choose to slay the enemy
in battle, he would be acting in accordance with his swadharma because
it is in the nature of a king to slay his enemies in battle. He would
not cease to be a king on account of slaying his enemies in battle.
Likewise, if a wife were to choose to be a mother of her husband’s
children, she would be acting in accordance with her swadharma because
it in the nature of a wife to be a mother of her husband’s children.
She would not cease to be a wife on account of being a mother of her
husband’s children. Thus it is that the dharma of men and women is
given by the swadharma of the bodies and stations that they possess. Now
there are stations that are given to men and woman by birth, and there
are stations that they come to occupy by the choices of their free will.
But in using their free will, they would be following dharma only by
choosing their occupations in accordance with the swadharma of the
bodies and stations that they already possess by virtue of the Wheel of
Dharma. Those who understand the natures of samanya and vishesha
see that they would remain true to the sameness of the stations given to
them by birth by choosing only those occupations and duties that are
inherent in the swadharma of these stations. Their duty is to be
true to the dharmic stations that the Dharma Chakra bestows them with in
the taxonomy of the universe - for it is by performing the actions of
the stations they naturally occupy that they would be true to what they
are, and they would thereby be true to the Eternal Dharma. It does not
therefore behove a man or woman to strive to be other than what his or
her swadharma is because that would be a dereliction of his or
her dharma. Lord Krishna sums up the gist of the Eternal Dharma in a
single verse in the Gita:

Better one’s own duty,
though devoid of merit, than the duty of another well discharged.
Better is death in one’s own duty; the duty of another is productive
of danger. (III.35)

This then is a brief
overview of the basis of Hindu Dharma. Now, with this background, we
shall attempt to provide a reply to the question: How is it that
Hinduism sees the different moral codes of the different religions as
being valid at the same time? I believe that the nature of Sanatana
Dharma itself provides the answer to this question. Each religion is a vishesha
religion (vishesha dharma) that is revealed by God to select
peoples in this world in accordance with the swadharma of these people
(the intrinsic natures of these specific people) and it is the dharma of
each religion to follow its respective swadharma as revealed to it by
God. The moral codes for different religions may be at variance with one
another depending on the natures of the people to whom these religions
have been revealed, but they are each the appropriate prescriptions of
dharma for them considering their constitution. Just as it is the dharma
of a king to slay his enemies whereas the dharma of a sannyasi does not
permit him to kill even a worm, and both these are in accordance with
dharma notwithstanding the contrary natures of their actions, similarly
the moral codes (or governance of actions) of different religions may be
different and even contrary to one another and yet they may all be in
accordance with the One Eternal Dharma. This is the basis of the Hindu
universal outlook regarding the validity of different moral codes that
exist in different religions.

Return to Dharma-Kshetra

According to Dr. Morales,
the primary cause of the acute problem that Hinduism faces today is
Radical Universalism. He concludes his paper with the lure of beautiful
words advising us to abandon the scourge of Radical Universalism:

If
we want to ensure that our youth remain committed to Hinduism as a
meaningful path, that our leaders teach Hinduism in a manner that
represents the tradition authentically and with dignity, and that the
greater Hindu community can feel that they have a religion that they
can truly take pride in, then we must abandon Radical Universalism. If
we want Hinduism to survive so that it may continue to bring hope,
meaning and enlightenment to untold future generations, then the next
time our son or daughter asks us what Hinduism is really all about,
let us not slavishly repeat to them that "all religions are the
same". Let us instead look them in their eyes, and teach them the
uniquely precious, the beautifully endearing, and the philosophically
profound truths of our tradition…truths that have been responsible
for keeping Hinduism a vibrantly living religious force for over 5000
years. Let us teach them Sanatana Dharma, the eternal way of Truth.

We do not disagree with Dr.
Morales that Hindus must go back to the profound truths of their own
religion. As we had said at the beginning of this paper, we appreciate
the efforts taken by Dr. Morales to combat the apathy of modern Hindus.
But the solution to the problem is certainly not the abandonment of
Universalism. When we consider the equivocation that Dr. Morales brings
to the term Radical Universalism, abandoning it would amount to
abandoning the heart of Hinduism as well as abandoning the faith we
repose in great saints such as Sri Ramakrishna. The end result of such
abandonment would be the rise of a new breed of Hindu youth marked with
a Judeo-Christian attitude towards other religions. These neo-Hindus
would look at other religions as so many different, and spurious,
mountains, and this may in time cause some well-intentioned Hindu youth
to set out on a mission to convert the members of other religions to the
one true faith! Universalism is the gift of our dharma; let us not
abandon it on such specious grounds.

What then is the problem
with Hinduism today? What is it that ails the Hindu? Why has the Hindu
now become a caricature of his old self? Why does the Hindu today take
the lesser truths of the sciences to justify the higher truths of his
religion? Why does the modern Hindu mask the great revelations of his
religion under silly and infantile clichés? Why has the Hindu become a
shadow of those foreigners without whose support he cannot even
pronounce the truths of his own religion? And above all, why has the
Hindu lost the vitality and the supreme courage with which he once
laughed at the chimera of the world and even faced death as a mere
bubble in the sea of life? Is this the Hindu that is descended from the
race of Harishchandra and Yajnavalkya?

The answer to all these
questions is rooted in one simple fact – the fact that we Hindus have
forsaken our dharma. We are caught today in the gale of a storm and it
tosses us about in all directions. The whirl of the storm is not outside
us; it is within us, created by the vacuum that we have ourselves
allowed to birth within our souls. The malady that plagues Hinduism
today is not due to the conquering Moghuls that came down from the
North-West, nor is it due to the colonial British that came sailing
across the seas, nor is it due to the glitter and kaleidoscope of the
modern West; it is due to our own debilitating weakness and inadequacy.
This weakness has created such an intense vacuum within us that it pulls
in all manner of alien things into our souls. We do not go out to ape
the West or to fall prey to consumerism; it comes pouring into the
vacuum within us because we have stripped ourselves of our wholeness and
now the emptiness in us lets in whatever lies in the vicinity, be they
gems or be they garbage.

One of the common remedies
prescribed by Hindu intellectuals for the problem of Hindu apathy is to
take the message of Vedanta to all and everyone. But they ignore the
fact that Vedanta is not for everyone. And moreover everyone does not
want Vedanta. Among the four human pursuits – kama, artha, dharma
and moksha – the pursuit of moksha is only for a select
few, for those whose hearts have been stirred by the Call of the Divine.
For others, it is quite natural to follow the call of kama, artha
and dharma. There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure;
there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of wealth and fame. But there is
something wrong with the pursuit of pleasure and wealth and fame when
they are immoderate and not in accordance with the dictates of dharma.
There has been in the recent past a markedly skewed propagation of the
message of Hinduism which places an overriding emphasis on Vedanta to
the near exclusion of the Dharma Kshetra within which Vedanta
appears as its supreme revelation. We need to bring about a correction
in perspective today so that all and sundry do not neglect what they
believe to be mere superstitions in favor of the highest goal that they
are unable to pursue and often fool themselves into believing they are
pursuing. Who amongst us has that kind of vairagya that is
necessary to follow the path of Vedanta? The overarching umbrella of
Hinduism is Hindu Dharma and not Vedanta. Vedanta is for a select few,
but Hindu Dharma is for all Hindus. Dharma is applicable even to the
aspirant of moksha because dharma governs every single thing in
this world without exception. It governs even the mukta; the mukta
remains free because he is one with his swadharma which is to be
forever free. What is required today is to return to the Dharma Kshetra
– to the values and way of living that is the necessary pre-requisite
for the welfare of each and everyone that is born a Hindu. The Law of
Dharma is Eternity moving in Time. He who follows the path of dharma
lives harmoniously in the flowing Song of Time. He is stilled in Time,
as it were, and out of the stillness of Eternity his vitality and
courage will once more blossom forth to give Hinduism the vigor that it
is now missing.

It is time for us to stand
up and speak. There is no need to be apologetic about our religion. The
land of Aryavarta has been sacked by Hindus and non-Hindus alike and
together we have foisted upon it a constitution that abrogates the
ancient Dharma of the land. On this land of Bharata has been imposed the
false ideals of equality and democracy, and the surrogate shrine of
secularism. We have left the dharma revealed to us by Lord Krishna to
bow our heads before the rabble and the imposter. We have sold ourselves
like harlots to every master that has come to us in the guise of a
reformist. We have had too many cowards and apologists amongst us. It is
time to be Warriors of the Spirit. The Varnashrama of Sanatana Dharma is
not something to be ashamed of. It is the Eternal Truth of Nature, the
axle on which the Wheel of Dharma revolves. We are heirs to the greatest
Truth on earth and to the greatest Way given to humankind. This Gift
comes with a responsibility that we Hindus cannot simply shrug ourselves
of.

Glorify eternal truth, but
the proof of it is to
Put your creed into your deeds
And practice truth in your action.
(Rg.Veda.III.4.7)

– Chittaranjan NaikJuly 17, 2005

Notes

The nyaya insight that all rules of
logic are inherently united with the objects to which they apply is
well brought out by Sri Badrinath Shukla, a philosopher who had
studied Nyaya in the traditional style, in the book ‘Samvada
– A Dialogue between Two Philosophical Traditions’. All
Indian philosophies consider the word to be pointing directly to the
object without mediation. According to Patanjali and Bhartrhari, the
word is united with the object before it becomes illuminated to the
witness in gross speech. In the philosophy of the Grammarians, the
illumination takes place through the explosion of the sphota.

The staging of Vak also appears in the
philosophy of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, especially in the path of Sambhavopaya.
While the articulation of Advaita Vedanta remains largely
intellectual, Kashmir Shaivism evocates the experiential flowering
of Advaita in much greater detail than in Advaita Vedanta. However,
I believe that the Dakshinamurthy Stotra of Shankara alongwith the
Manasollasa of Suresvara bridges the two Advaita traditions
beautifully.

Apart from the Puranas, the darshanas
of Nyaya and Vedanta are also part of the Upangas. The upangas
come under the category of Smriti.

The Tirthas are infused with God’s
Shakti due to His association with these places. The Shakti of
Godhead also resides in the idols of Gods that are consecrated by
proper mantras. All this is the subject-matter of the Tantras.

In seeking to drive home the point
that opposing moral codes cannot be valid at the same time, Dr.
Morales gives us an example of a religious bigot that is ready to
kill a person of another faith even as that person is kneeling down
for prayer. I believe that this example has been conveniently chosen
without questioning whether there is any religion that truly
subscribes to such actions. I would believe that such actions result
from the misunderstandings of the subtler nuances of their own
scriptural utterances, particularly as regards what is meant by the
term ‘infidel’ and the circumstances under which the actions are
allowed. Dr. Morales would need to consider that Islam, which is
commonly held to prescribe such actions towards infidels, has given
rise to Sufism that actually embraces their brothers from other
religions as believers of the same God.

It is misleading to apply terms such
as ‘panentheism’ to Hinduism. I believe that this
proclivity towards excessive labelling is the result of too much
academic analysis and too little experiential understanding.

In reconstructing the sequence of
events in Keshab’s life, especially with regard to the genesis of
the New Dispensation, I have followed the dates recorded by his
disciple Mazoomdar rather than those given by Romain Rolland, as the
sources of the latter are unknown.

These words of Swami Vivekananda are
not to be construed as his rejection of the varna system; it is
merely his characteristic style of delivering a message forcefully
and with feeling. Elsewhere, Vivekananda has spoken about the
efficacy of the varnashrama system.

The source of the Tantras is not other
than the Vedas. They were however revealed in their special forms to
humankind by Shiva and Devi.

In the Vedic structure, kama
shastra, alongwith music, drama, etc., comes under the category
of gandharva shastra. This classification may be found in the
book ‘The Vedas’ by Sri Chandrasekharendra Sarasvati. In
the Dhvanyaloka Locaca, Abhinavagupta speaks about aesthetic
absorption as in essence the same as spiritual ‘pleasure’.

After Shankara defeated the famed
Mimamsa philosopher, Mandana Misra, in debate, Ubbaya Bharati, the
wife of Mandana, challenged Shankara to a debate on kama shastra.
Being a sannyasi and wholly unfamiliar with that art, Shankara begs
for one month’s time to come back for the debate. He then leaves
his body and enters the body of King Amaruka who had just then
passed away. Inhabiting the body of the king, he sports with the
queens of Amaruka and learns the science of erotics. He is even said
to have written a book on the subject called Amarushataka.
When he returns after a month, Ubbaya Bharati concedes victory
without a debate. Much later, when Shankara is about to ascend the Sarvajna
Pitha at Kashmir, a voice from the heavens challenges his claim
to the throne on the ground that he had violated the dharma of a
sannyasi by having carnal relationships with women. Shankara then
replies that dharma had not been violated by the actions performed
in the body of Amaruka because what is done in one body does not
attach itself to another body. The way is then made clear for him to
ascend the throne of Supreme Knowledge.

It is interesting to see that the same
two-fold dharma, Pravritti Dharma and Nirvitti Dharma,
appears in China as the Tao of Confucius and the Tao of
LaoTze.

I would like to thank Sri
Sudhir Raikar for carefully reading the article and giving me his
valuable comments and frank opinion, and to Sri Govindrajan for his
patient hearing during the time I was writing the article. I am deeply
grateful to Sri Sri Ralph Nataraj, the Mahayogi in the lineage of
Tryambaka, who is a shining example of the Light leading through all
paths.

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